


Express Ticket to the End

by theanatomyofadreamer



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Arthur is haunted by his dead mother, Bisexuality, Casual Sex, Closeted Character, Eating Disorders, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Loss of Parent(s), M/M, Masturbation, Mental Health Issues, Recreational Drug Use, Self-Harm, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Tyra Banks - Freeform, copious swearing, dub-con, so much swearing tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-05-18 17:24:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5936695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theanatomyofadreamer/pseuds/theanatomyofadreamer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur Pendragon can't decide who he hates more: the privileged upper-class company he keeps or himself. Bored, lonely and despairing, he turns his emotions against himself, dead-set on a fast track to the grave. At first, the alcohol and the eating disorder seem like a cliche, but he soon finds solace in the blackout nights and the toxic burn of bile in his throat.<br/>Enter Merlin Emrys, professional slacker and occasional sex god, with cheekbones as sharp as tequila and blue eyes that burn almost as much as the bile.<br/>And Arthur wonders if this beautiful boy might save him, or whether he's just a one-way express ticket to the end.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I'm doing this when I said I wouldn't- I'm embarking on another series! While my other works tend to be a lot lighter and fluffier, this is the exact opposite. It has a bajillion tags for a reason. This story will be slow and infrequently updated because it's a lot longer than anything I usually write. I've compiled a playlist for this story and open each chapter with a song from that playlist if you want to listen along. Also, thank you to Bree for helping me out so much with this and everything.

_"Face stained in the ceiling_  
_Why does it keep saying,_  
_I don't have to see you right now_  
_I don't have to see you right now_ "  
**Mt Washington- Local Natives  
-**

Arthur Pendragon stared at the free-standing, Victorian style bath tub in the middle of his bathroom and wondered if he would ever have the courage to drown himself.

“Arthur, are you even listening to me?”

“Yeah, ‘course.”

“So what do you think?”

_I think you people make me want to die._ “Yeah, sounds good.”

His voice was raw and uneven but Percy didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, at least didn’t comment. His phone had rung only a minute or two after he had assumed the all too familiar position of kneeling before the toilet, one hand pushing back his overgrown blond fringe, the other fishing down his throat for the dinner he’d been forced to eat with his father. He had wiped his vomit-coated fingers on his jeans and took the call. Percy only ever called to invite him to parties, invitations he never turned down. It had been the same for the last two years, he’d relay the address of a stranger and go call the rest of the lads and they would all congregate some time after midnight at the disclosed location.

“Right, well, I’ll see you at half ten.”

“Wait, what?”

“I knew you weren’t listening, Art. _Leon_ \- remember Leon? Your friend?- is going to pick you up at your house- that’s the place where you _live,_ just in case you’ve forgotten- and we’re going to _drive_ in the _car_ that Leon owns- are you still following?- across town to the party. Par-tee _,_ Arty. Do you understand?”

“Why don’t you take those unnaturally large arms and go fuck yourself, Percival?”

Percy chuckled. “Love you too, Pendragon.”

Arthur hung up. He reached up from his seat on the floor and flushed away his dinner, which was beginning to stink of meat, stomach acid and guilt. Arthur forced himself to his feet. The room tilted violently back and forth but he sucked in a breath through his teeth and pushed himself into a messy stagger out of the en-suite and towards his bed. He hated the way his knees knocked together. It made him feel like an old man.

He fell onto the mattress and began to peel off his jeans in favour of a pair that didn’t have an ugly brown smear of puke across the thigh. He held them up in front of his face, the stain at eye-level, and stared at them with the confused repulsion usually reserved for modern art. He felt this strange fascination, the same unsavoury fascination toddlers had with their own excrement. He didn’t force his stomach contents to make constant reappearances for reasons of vanity. He wasn’t aiming for that skeletal aesthetic famed and worshipped on teenage blogs. This was a reclaiming of control- or so he told himself, sometimes his conviction wavered. His body was a tool; for himself, for his father, for the countless girls whose legs he crawled between when he was feeling particularly hateful. Just like he destroyed his body, he destroyed his mind. Alcohol numbed his consuming hatred for everyone and everything and made existence temporarily tolerable, even if he couldn’t remember the sensation the next day.

He had resigned himself to simultaneously being every cliché in the book; blond, beautiful, rich, ungrateful, _pathetic._

Arthur had some time to kill before Leon made an appearance, so he tossed the jeans on the floor, lay across his bed and turned on the flat-screen TV mounted on his wall.  As much as Arthur would never admit that he adored America’s Next Top Model, he _adored_ America’s Next Top Model and was quite happy to waste a few hours marathoning cycle 11 and jacking off during the underwear shoots.

The sound of a car horn beeping bluntly from beyond his window a few hours later broke him from his Tyra-induced revelry. Despite his state of relative undress, he wandered to the window to see Gwaine’s shaggy head hanging out the car window like some sort of over-grown black-haired dog. When he caught sight of Arthur, half hidden behind the curtains, he began to wave and gesticulate wildly.  With a roll of his eyes, Arthur disappeared into the room again, grabbing himself a clean pair of jeans- freshly washed and pressed by the maid every second morning-, slipped on a pair of beaten up red canvas shoes and snatched a red Adidas hoodie from the hook on the back of his door as he left the room.

A few moments later, he was wedged between Lancelot and a car door as the overly packed car sped across town. Honestly, the entire routine was getting a little old now. It had been going on for two years and the thrill had worn off a little when he turned eighteen and it all became legal (well, most of it anyway.) When he’d started at Camelot University, they’d reinvented the scene a little, adding new people to mix, like Gwaine, who Arthur had met at a party and had criticised the way he’d rolled joints. The rest of the lads, he’d known since secondary school, bar Leon, who he’d met in primary.

The only problem growing up with people is that you sometimes grow out of them.

And Arthur feared that was what had happened to him.

Gwaine turned in the passenger seat to face Arthur. “Took you long enough” he chided, knowingly.

“I was indisposed” he returned with a grin, choosing his words slowly and carefully.

Gwaine laughed loudly. “Your Tyra Banks obsession is fucking weird, man. Just face it, you’re never gonna fuck her.”

“Dude, she’s old!” Percy interjected, his tone a cocktail of shock and disgust.

“Ah, here!” Gwaine exclaimed- his thickest Irish accent always came out when he was in some way outraged or indignant. “She’s still fine as anything. And she’s only 41! That’s well within shagging limits.”

Arthur snorted and turned his gaze out the window, tuning out the ensuing discussion of cougars and older women as they turned into a gated community, not unlike the one he himself lived in, but perhaps a little smaller and not as showy. His father was all about showy. He hated that. They piled out of the black Mercedes like clowns from a clown car and Arthur thought ‘clown’ a fitting description of himself, and possibly his friends, but he chose not to extend his thoughts beyond himself. He was, after all, the centre of his own existence. His life revolved around himself. He fell into step behind Percy, hiding himself behind the other man’s large frame, as the guys filtered through the front door of a total stranger’s house. There was a moment, as there always was when a group entered a party, where they stared at the party that was already happening and the party stared back, and the group had to decide how to proceed.

 Arthur scanned the crowd, trying to gauge what kind of party they had crashed- rarely were they expressly _invited_ to these things, rather they had a tendency to just show up as a group and integrate themselves into their surroundings before anyone could question their presence. It had become a sign of a successful party if Arthur and his “Knights” showed up at some point. He fucking hated that title. It was easily the stupidest thing he’d ever heard and he knew the guys agreed with him but the title got them all laid more often than not and so, no one outwardly objected and Arthur found himself the reluctant leader of a group of people he wasn’t even sure he liked anymore.

When Arthur finally pulled himself from his thoughts,- the resentful thoughts that always left a taste of guilt in his mouth, a taste not too dissimilar to the remnants of bile that coated his tongue and wouldn’t leave his taste buds no matter how much he spat-he noticed that he was alone. His friends had dispersed and become part of the crowd who were no longer staring at him, but steadfastly ignoring him. He began to move through the sea of bodies, being perhaps too liberal with his broad shoulders, knocking people aside indiscriminately on his quest for something familiar, be it a face or a bottle, hoping more for the latter than the former.

At this point, he knew the layout of a party like an algebraic formula. Somewhere in the kitchen was always a set-up, a table or a countertop, where an array of alcohol and soft drinks were available. Grabbing himself a generic plastic cup, he poured himself three pub measures of a reasonably priced Scotch. Cheap by his usual standards, but it wasn’t the quality he was after, it was the sharp burn against his raw throat. He winced upon first contact, coughed and spluttered a bit, but emptied his cup before refilling it again and wandering into the body of the party.

A few hours in, Arthur found himself on the back porch, leaning against the railing on the small decked area, both hands nursing his nearly empty plastic cup, staring out into the darkness. He didn’t want to be here anymore. For a moment, he wasn’t sure if he meant that in the literal sense of this party, or the more figurative sense of this life, of this existence. He was tired. Bone-tired, weary and sore.

He tossed the plastic cup as far as he could down the garden, which wasn’t very far, as the wind caught the flimsy material and brought it fluttering to the ground barely a few feet from the railing. With a noise of disgust, he turned back to the sliding door to find Gwaine stood there, just beyond the threshold of the glass barrier, a few steps onto the decking. Gwaine was staring at him with a wide-eyed, absent intensity, a drink in one hand, the other hung loosely by his side. This level of eye contact was growing uncomfortable for Arthur, when Gwaine broke the stare and turned to close over the sliding door behind him and walked over to lean on the railing beside the blonde.

“Hey” Arthur smiled weakly.

“Pendragon” Gwaine returned with a nod.

Arthur resumed his previous position of leaning against the railing, looking out into the unlit garden. The only light came from the house, filtering out through the sliding door and the kitchen window. He could make out the shimmering of a pool, the outline of some deck chairs and the rustling of plants. Gwaine mimicked him, assuming the same position but looking at Arthur rather than the darkness.

“Any particular reason you’re hanging around out here like a mopey teenager?”

Arthur shrugged lazily, a one shouldered gesture with no depth to it. “Bored, I guess.”

Gwaine laughed, a lilting, musical sound that had Arthur looking at him from the corner of his eye for the briefest second before heat rushed to his cheeks and he had to look away.  “Come here” he said softly, turning to Arthur, who didn’t move at first, so he pushed against Arthur’s shoulder until he turned to face him. Gwaine took his chin in his hand, pried his lips apart with the pad of his thumb and brought his plastic cup to Arthur’s lips. Arthur’s eyes locked on his, and he gave an encouraging nod before slowly beginning to tip the cup so the liquid passed his lips. Arthur drank. He drank until there was nothing left.

“Just wait until that hits you” Gwaine smiled wickedly and Arthur realised it hadn’t been just alcohol he had consumed. “Got ‘em off my housemate before graduating and they’re fucking good, man. Just don’t tell the lads because I don’t feel like sharing.”

Gwaine was the eldest of their group at twenty-three and the first of them to graduate. Arthur had just finished his first year of a business degree, not of his choosing. He had finished the year, but he probably hadn’t passed it. He would deal with that in August. He had two months of summer and a nineteenth birthday to survive first.

Gwaine let the now empty plastic cup fall to the ground. The sound made Arthur jump and he realised Gwaine’s thumb was still resting lightly just below his lower lip. Before he knew it, Gwaine’s hand was moving and he could feel the brush of skin against his mouth again. His lips parted in response. Gwaine stared.

A sudden blast of music from inside the house had them leaping apart. Gwaine turned and left wordlessly. Arthur reached for the railing to steady himself against the heat that was now rushing around his body despite the cold night air. As quickly as the heat came, the nausea came too and he gagged. There was nothing in his throat, barely anything in his stomach to begin with, but he needed to be sick. He stepped off the decking area and into the darkness. He could barely see a thing away from the light of the house, just the vague shapes of things around him. He was hungry, he realised. No. He was starving. That thought was enough to bring up everything he’d drank in the last few hours and send it splashing all over the grass.

It took him a number of minutes to stop shaking, bent over with his hands on his knees. He drew deep lungfuls of air until his hands stopped shaking like he was having a seizure. He straightened up, took another deep breath and made his way back in, his mind set on another drink. He was just reaching for the dwindling stack of plastic cups when a body slid between his own and the countertop.

“Hi. Arthur, right?”

He was still blinking in confusion but managed to bob his head dumbly.

"Vivian. But you can call me Vi."

"Um, no, thank you" he returned with a meek smile. The blonde had come out of nowhere, sliding her short but curvy body into the gap like some sort of overly sexualised ninja, dressed in a white tank top to expose maximum cleavage and a pair of black leggings. Normally he would have channelled his attention into someone like her, but right now he was more concerned with the unattended bottle of bourbon she was now obstructing from his view. He reached around her with a slightly apologetic smile to grab the bottle in question and a cup. Stepping aside, he began to pour himself a drink.

Vivian lingered, resting her weight on one hand on the counter, the other treading through the ends of her long blonde hair. "So..." she began.

He looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to go on. Instead, she just kept smiling and looking up at him. "Oh, uh... do you want a drink?" he asked.

A few drinks later, he found himself on the sofa, her legs draped across his lap. Her voice was grating on and on in his ears, but he was making all the right noises and head movements to keep her there. She had one arm around the back of his head, resting along the top of the couch. He felt her move and suddenly her fingers were treading through his hair, lightly and absently. He leaned into her touch and closed his eyes a moment. Her touch brought him out of the party, out of his body, back to some vague remembering of a time long ago, a time he couldn’t place but it was back when everything had been okay before... before…

“You like that?” asked a breathy voice in his ear.

“Yeah” came his own gruff response.

She moved, arranging herself until she was straddling him, her fingers never leaving his hair but now her mouth was on his. He let it happen. He was too preoccupied with her fingers on his scalp. He wanted to be outside of himself again, he needed to remember that memory, to feel that far away sensation of being lost but calm and not lost and despairing and-

She ground her hips into his and he gasped into her mouth. He brought his hands to her hips to still her but she only took this as encouragement and did it again, rolling her hips with effortless grace. He tightened his grip and pulled her down on him, giving up on his earlier decision to resist her. It wasn’t in his nature to say no.

She removed her mouth from his and he made a noise of frustration. “Come upstairs with me” she grinned. He took a second to consider this, shrugged and followed her up the stairs.

The room she led him to was dark until she turned on a lamp and it was blue. Everything in the room was blue. It reminded him of a little boy’s room. A little boy’s room with mud-tracked footprints on the blue blue carpet and a faux scolding smile and warmth-

Vivian sat on the edge of the single bed, watching him as he looked at everything. The bed was right in the centre of the room and beyond that there wasn’t much else but a desk and a blue-doored wardrobe. He closed the door and stepped forward, tripping on the edge of the blue rug that lay on the blue carpet. He passed it off as nothing and hoped she hadn’t noticed.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he made it onto the bed, but he was there and she was on top of him, pulling at his clothing but not making much progress in her urgency so she turned her attention to her own clothes. It felt like his brain was working on a ten second delay, playing back everything in a blurred slow motion, like a camera that couldn’t focus on the scene playing out in front of him.

The lace of her bra was rough against his bare chest, grating against his skin as she pressed herself to him. He tried to move away from the sensation but the mattress pressed firmly into his back and kept him there. He looked beyond her at the blue stained ceiling, the blue stained ceiling he’d seen before that made him think of warm hands on his forehead, a warm heavy weight beside him.

Vivian was pulling open his belt, the belt he wore because none of his jeans fit him anymore, and then made deft work of his button and fly. The open, oversized jeans fell off his hips, exposing his sunken stomach and the waistband of his boxers. She was reaching for him. He saw her hand connect with his skin long before he felt it. Pressure on his empty stomach. He closed his eyes, not able to look anymore. He felt sick.

It felt better with his eyes closed. The panic that had been building subsided and he was aware of her hands on him, light but demanding, coaxing life into him. He willed himself to look at her but his eyes were too heavy. He hadn’t the strength to open them. He felt comfortable in the darkness, comfortable enough that he could no longer feel her but was aware of her there. All of his nerves were turning off. He couldn’t feel the mattress below him or Vivian’s body above him or the weight of his clothes on his skin or the hollow pain in his abdomen. He could feel darkness on him, around him, holding him close.

Safe. He felt safe.

And weightless.

And far away from the too blue room.

*

A woman was singing to him when he woke up. It was a song that he knew but couldn’t remember the lyrics to. Arthur lay there for a while, listening to the melody and singing along under his breath. The room was empty when he opened his eyes.

He was only half dressed, some of his clothes tossed on the floor. His pants were open and halfway down his legs. His boxers hung low on his hips as if they’d be pulled down too, but not all the way. He lay on the blue bed in the blue room and considered going back to sleep, kicking off his beaten canvas shoes and his too big jeans, pulling the duvet over his head and sleeping another few hours, but he wanted out of that room. He needed to get out.

He redressed quickly and started down the hall. The house was mostly empty in the daylight, strewn with drinks and cups. He couldn’t tell if it was early or late. There were still sleeping bodies in the sitting room and from the bottom of the stairs, he could hear a few quiet voices in the kitchen, but none that he recognized. He made for the door.

The street was littered with cars. The harsh sunlight blinded him for a moment and a searing pain started up behind his eyes. Using one hand to cover his eyes, he scanned them for a black Mercedes but couldn’t find one. They were gone. He was alone.

He scrambled for the phone he’d shoved in the pocket of his hoodie hours ago. By some miracle, it was still there. It flashed to let him know it was dying. He half wished he could flash back and tell it the same about himself.

“’Lo?” came the sleep-heavy reply.

“Did you leave?”

“Yeah, man. Hours ago” Gwaine replied, yawning.

“You left me here.”

“You disappeared. Someone said they saw you with some blonde. I assumed you were- how did you put it?- ‘indisposed’?”

Gwaine was laughing but Arthur didn’t find it very funny. “You left me here!” he said again, with more venom now.

“Sorry, man. Relax-“

“I can’t relax! I don’t even know where I am!”

“Call a cab or something.”

“I _don’t know where I am!”_

“Fine! Jesus, man. I’ll call you a fucking cab then.”

“Don’t fucking bother.”

Arthur hung up. He was furious. He didn’t know where he was, he had no cash on him, his so-called friends had fucking abandoned him! Part of him couldn’t believe it, but part of him had always suspected that they cared as little about him as he did about them. At least now he knew the truth. He shoved the phone back in his pocket and started walking.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to Bree and Vicky, who always read my shit even when it's shit. I've borrowed another track from the Life is Strange OST because it is perfect

_"We've been migratory animals_  
_Living under changing weather_  
 _Someday we will foresee the obstacles_  
 _Through the blizzard, through the blizzard_ "  
**Obstacles- Syd Matters**

**-**

Uther Pendragon had the kind of voice that his son, Arthur, found impossible to pay attention to. He was aware that his father was speaking, he could hear the general sounds of words coming from a moving mouth, but he was too preoccupied with chewing the food in his own to really hear what was actually being said. _Chew five times, swallow, take a drink,_ he repeated to himself, but he was now on his fifth glass of water and was desperate for a pee. He looked down at the half full plate and felt dread weigh down his already heavy stomach.

He set down his knife and fork and tuned himself back into the one-sided conversation that was being had with him. He pushed his plate away from him.

“…I’ll be leaving in the morning to oversee the project anyway.”

“Oh? For how long?” Arthur raised his glass to his lips and tried not to appear too hopeful as he sipped his water.

“About a week if it all goes well.” A keen glint in his father’s eyes told him he hadn’t been successful.

“Sounds like there’s a lot to be done” he commented and tuned out again.

When his father finally dismissed him from the dining table, Arthur retreated to the safety of his bathroom. He had probably spent more time on his bathroom floor than he had in his actual bedroom this summer, he realised. He tried to push himself up from the white tiled floor but his elbows buckled under the pressure and gave out, landing him back on his ass with a muffled thud. Fine, he would just… stay here then.

The bath tub was moving. No, he was just dizzy. He took a deep breath, summoned what little energy he had left and pulled himself to his feet. He stumbled a little, but he was upright. He felt oddly proud of himself.

*

The sun was offensively bright the following morning as it intruded into the room without welcome through the curtains he’d forgotten to pull the previous night. He swore and pulled the duvet over his head. Maybe he would suffocate. He welcomed the possibility.

The darkness helped ease the pounding in his head. For some reason, he had been impatient for the morning to come but now that it had arrived, he couldn’t for the life of him remember why.

But then he did.

He fucking loved when his father was away. It meant no enforced dinners and a temporary escape from the formal dining table. He could live on tea and water if he wanted to. The thought of seven whole days doing whatever he wanted was almost enough to bring tears of joy to his eyes.

Instead, he threw off the covers, stepped into a pair of house slippers that the maid- and in turn, his father- insisted on, and wandered down to the kitchen, still in his boxers. The sound of the kettle echoed through the house as Arthur dumped large heaping spoonfuls of sugar into a mug until his tea bag was entirely buried in it. His shaking hands cast sugar all over the counter. The tea warmed his whole body, sickly sweet but comforting. The tremors eased with each scalding sip.

“You’re awake!”

The mug crashed to the floor and Arthur screamed in fright before jumping away from the boiling liquid as it soaked his slippers. “Fuck!” he cried, spinning to see a woman standing in his kitchen. “Who the fuck are you?!” he demanded.

“OhmyGodI’msosorry!” she squeaked. “Are you okay?”

“No!” he returned sharply. “I’ve just had the shit scared out of me by a stranger in my own kitchen.”

She raised her hands as if to put him at ease. “Oh no, I’m not a stranger. I’m Gwen.”

Arthur looked at her. She wasn’t very tall, slender and roughly twenty-three, with dark hair and skin, and a friendly face. It was her amiable expression that put him the most on edge. “Still a stranger.”

“Your father’s assistant?”

“I think I’d rather a stranger.”

“He didn’t tell you, did he?” She was smiling still but shaking her head. “He’s asked me to stay here while he’s away. Not to look after you! Clearly, you’re…” There was a pause as she waved a vague hand up and down his body, blushing suddenly. “…an adult” she concluded, finally.

Arthur became aware of his state of undress. Glancing down at himself, he suddenly saw what she saw. He was losing his broad shape, becoming skinnier and more slender in places. His black Calvin Klein’s hung low on his sharply defined hips, the rest of his body bare bar his sodden slippers. He wondered if he should feel embarrassed or at least somewhat self-conscious but it never came. It was the blush on her cheeks, the blush that gave away the fact that, even as he wasted away, his body still had an effect on her.

“I am an adult, and I don’t need minding” he said evenly.

“I’m here more for… the house. You know… Ehm, your father says you’re out a lot.”

Arthur bit back a smirk. “I’m sure he greatly disapproves.”

Her hesitation told him all he needed to know. He had only been out twice in the near three weeks since the party with the blue room. The first he went to another house party with the Knights and stuck by Lance’s side the entire time to ensure he wasn’t left behind again. The second, he went to a bar alone and came home with a girl whose name he wasn’t sure he had ever learned in the first place.

“So what, am I, like, under house arrest or something?” The thought was almost amusing, that his father expected someone so small to keep him inside all week. He was easily half a foot taller than her.

She flushed again. “He did ask me to tell you not to go out, yes.”

Arthur stared, his face blank but a pointed look of contempt in his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Arthur” she gave a wince. “He’s my boss. What can I do?”

Arthur sighed, giving it an added boast of dramatics and stalked off. His slippers squelched and left wet footprints behind him.

“Aren’t you going to clean up your mess?”

“Nope” he called back.

*

By the third day, Arthur was ready to set the whole house on fire. Gwen had cooked him dinner and guilted him into eating with her both nights. Unlike eating with his father who really didn’t care if Arthur spoke or not, she asked too many questions.

“Are you sure you don’t want more?” she asked, waving a bowl of vegetables in his face.

“No, thanks” he forced out through gritted teeth.

She frowned. “You haven’t eaten all day.”

“Yes I have” he lied.

“Arthur, I’ve been sitting in the kitchen since this morning. You haven’t left your room all day, or yesterday for that matter. Are you feeling alright? Are you sick?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? You’re a bit pale-”

“I’m fine!” The words came out with more volume and bite than he’d intended. Everything in the room seemed to rush at him and he blinked to steady his vision as he jolted in disorientated surprise.

“Arthur…” Her voice was soft and weighted with concern. It felt like a slap in the face.

“Gwen” he hissed in response. He wasn’t sure why he was being such a dick to her. Her concern and her kindness made him distrustful and immediately his guard was up. This was foreign behaviour to him. It felt like a trap.

She didn’t respond verbally and Arthur was too afraid to look up and see the hurt that flashed across her face. She began to gather the various serving bowls from the table. He got to his feet and did the same. They were still silent as they began to clean up, Gwen washing the dishes and Arthur taking up a tea towel to dry them. She kept glancing at him, quickly and timidly, and he braced himself for the silence to be broken.

“I know you resent the fact that I’m here-”

“Gwen, I don’t-”

“- but I’m only doing my job. Your father is my boss, Arthur. I thought that maybe if I made an effort with you, it wouldn’t be so awkward but I only seem to be annoying you, so I’ll stop.”

“No, Gwen, I’m sorry. I know you’re just trying to be nice. I…” he stopped to take a breath and consider if he really wanted to finish that sentence. “I’m not used to it.”

She cocked her head slightly in confusion. “Your father said you eat together most nights.”

“Yes, and I hate it. It’s more for show than anything else. We don’t really… talk.”

“Oh” she began. “Well, we don’t have to eat together. From now, if I make food, I’ll just leave you some and you can eat it when you’re ready.”

He returned the smile she was giving him. “Thanks.”

“But you still can’t go out.”

Arthur let out a groan.

*

“Yo, Art!”

Arthur pressed his phone between his head and his shoulder as he carefully unwrapped the foil from the meal Gwen had left him the previous night. “Perce, what’s up?”

“Thinking of heading out tonight, if you’re in.”

Arthur paused, frowning down at the curry that greeted him. He knew he should have just said no and hung up the phone. It wasn’t like he was going to miss anything life changing and being a good boy would earn him plenty of brownie points with Gwen, and possibly his father but he wasn’t going to hold his breath on that one. But instead, he tucked the foil back over the plate, returned it to the fridge and asked “What did you have in mind?”

“An old friend of Gwaine’s is having a house-warming, I think.”

“Oh? Do we know them?”

“I don’t think so. I think he said the dude’s name was like Martin or Mervin.... Something weird.”

“Really, Percival? Do you think you’re in a position to judge people on weird names?” Arthur chuckled.

“Fuck off, Pendragon. You in or nah?”

Arthur dropped his voice, aware of Gwen in the next room surrounded by paperwork. “Put me down as a yeah for now, but that might change.”

“You got a better offer or something?”

“Not exactly, just gotta make a call first” he responded vaguely.

“Oh yeah? Who?”

“What are you? My secretary? Fuck off and hang up already.”

Once Percy had left him with a huff and a dial-tone, Arthur retreated to his room to make another call.

“Greetings, maggot child. What can I do for you today?”

“Excuse me, rude” Arthur laughed. “Where are you?”

“A little direct there, don’t you think?”

“I need a favour.”

“Well it’s a good thing ‘charity’ is my middle name.”

“Actually Morgana, your middle name is Patricia and I’m serious, I need help.”

“Anything for you, little brother.”

Arthur grinned. “How quickly can you get to the house?”

Morgana sighed. “I can probably be there by this afternoon. How long do you need me?”

“Only until tomorrow. I need you to distract Uther’s babysitter so I can go out tonight.”

“Ah to be young and debaucherous” she said wistfully. “Wait, did Uther really get you a babysitter?”

“Sort of. His assistant is staying here while he’s away and she’s under strict orders to keep me here.”

“Let me guess; young, pretty, not very smart?”

“Actually, she’s very nice.”

“Nice as in kind, or nice as in decent tits?”

Arthur snorted. “The first one.”

“Well I suppose I’ve got a train to go catch.”

“Don’t sound so put out. You know you love me” he teased.

“Alright, Gossip Girl, calm yourself. See you later then. XOXO.”

Arthur was still laughing when he hung up. He hadn’t always been on the best terms with his half-sister but they’d become a lot closer since she’d moved out nearly four years ago. He suspected their disdain for their father had done a lot to bring them together in their teenage years. Morgana was twenty-two and worked in fashion. Uther’s traditional idea that the male child be the heir meant that Morgana had certain freedoms that he could only ever dream of, such as choosing what to do with the rest of her life.

He returned downstairs to make tea to ease the hunger that was building in his stomach and warm him up. He was shivering a lot more lately, it was harder to get warm and stay warm. He took the tea to his room where he drank it under a blanket before dragging himself to the shower.

*

Arthur did his best to act surprised when Morgana showed up a few hours later, just before dinner. He made sure to spend as little time with her as possible, allowing his half-sister to sweep Gwen into the living room after they’d eaten, Morgana chatting all the while. She shot him a look as she shut the door in his face that told him to get moving.

He took off up the stairs in a sprint, texting Leon to come and get him as quickly as possible. He changed into a pair of black jeans and a dark denim shirt. He hesitated over his usual red canvas shoes and kicked them aside in favour of a pair of black Converse he didn’t like very much but owned anyway. He crept back down the stairs and waited until he could hear Morgana’s obnoxiously loud laugh to open the door. Leon was waiting for him at the end of the drive with an empty car so Arthur helped himself to the passenger seat. Within the hour, they were all packed into the car.

“It’s a little early” Lance observed, looking out the window at the settling dusk.

“It’s eight pm” Leon countered.

“It just feels weird going to a party when the sun is still up.”

“You can try telling it to go away but I don’t see it working out for you” Arthur quipped.

“Besides” Gwaine joined in, “you haven’t met Merlin yet. His party probably started hours ago.”

Percy snorted. “What kind of name is Merlin?”

“What kind of name is Percival?” Gwaine snapped back. “There will be no slagging my friends, you hear me?”

They all nodded solemnly and Gwaine advised Leon to take a turn. The house they pulled up in front of a short while later was indistinguishable from the rest of the houses in the small estate they found themselves in. As they all climbed out of the car, the street was surprisingly quiet, only a faint suggestion of music could be heard from outside.

“You sure this is the right place?” Percy asked.

“I know this might seem like slumming it by our usual standards but give it a chance” Gwaine smirked as he led them up to the front door, which had been left slightly ajar.

Exchanging glances among themselves, the rest of them followed him into the house. The open door did nothing to clear the thick haze of smoke that hung about the house. Arthur swallowed a cough as a messy haired, round cheeked boy bounded up to Gwaine and threw his arms around him.

“Dude, long time, no see!” he cheered, clapping Gwaine on the shoulder.

Gwaine introduced the boy as Will and introduced them each in turn. “Will and Merlin live here. We all went to school together.”

“And uni, briefly”, Will laughed.

“Merlin was always a flake” Gwaine chuckled.

Before long, they had all dispersed and Arthur was left nursing a warm can of beer on a godawful green couch as Will and a few strangers sat on the floor in front of him, passing a joint around in a circle.  He could hear the sounds of a game of beer pong happening in the small kitchen over the miserable hipster shit these people seemed to call music that crooned from someone’s unattended iPod.

Had he really snuck out for this?

He became aware of a weight settling on the couch next to him and glanced over to see who had joined him. He was met with huge pale blue eyes boring into him from underneath a long fringe of thick black hair, stark against the pasty skin it fell onto. Arthur gave a quick smile of greeting and looked away again. He tried to ignore the weight of wide eyes on him.

It became apparent after a few minutes that the boy was not going to stop staring at him with those creepy bug eyes of his. Sighing, Arthur committed himself to small talk.

“Whoever picked the music on that iPod has shit taste.”

“That’s mine” the boy replied.

“Fuck,” Arthur quickly looked away. He committed himself to never making small talk again.

The boy laughed. “You’re Arthur Pendragon, right?”

“How does everyone know who I am?!”

The boy laughed again but didn’t answer him. Arthur felt small under the weight of the boy’s unrelenting stare. “I reckon it’s only fair, since you seem to already know me, that I get your name too.”

“Mordred” the boy said.

“Nice to meet you. Sorry about insulting your music.”

Mordred shrugged. “Your opinion is your opinion.” Finally, just as Arthur was beginning to squirm, Mordred dropped his burrowing stare from Arthur’s face. He was about to let out a relieved breath when he noticed that Mordred was now staring at his hands that were curled around the can. He held his breath to stop their mild tremors. He waited, though he wasn’t sure what for.

There was something about Mordred’s eyes, as they moved back to Arthur’s own, that told him he’d been caught. His eyes were full of knowing. Placing the can on the ground, Arthur leapt to his feet, panic racing around his body, making him feel sick. “Excuse me” he muttered to the strange boy, and tried to leave.

He was stopped by Mordred grabbing his wrist. He turned to glare at the boy but noticed that Mordred wasn’t looking at him at all, but rather past him at the stairs. Arthur followed his gaze until he landed on the figure stood halfway down the stairs, visible through the wide double doorway that connected the sitting room to the hall. The man had short curling black hair, with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass which lifted in a grin that crinkled clear blue eyes. He was dressed in just a pair of black leather pants, his bare torso painted in neon pink body paint, some kind of pagan symbol Arthur had never seen before. His hands were placed on narrow, snow white hips.

Stood halfway down the stairs was the most beautiful man Arthur had ever seen.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's song was the song that really inspired the whole series so I would definitely suggest you check it out. I play it whenever I'm stuck on a chapter or scene. It may appear again in my playlist because it just has all the relevance.  
> Thank you again to my fabulous betas for their constant help and really helping me craft Arthur and Merlin's characters as the story progresses. And remember kids- always have an exit plan.

_“So I walked into the haze,_  
_And a million dirty ways,_  
_Now I see you lying there,_  
_Like a lilo losing air, air”_  
**Spanish Sahara- Foals**

**-**

Arthur hadn’t realised he’d been holding his breath until his lungs began to burn and begged him to draw air again. Mordred’s grip on his wrist went slack and Arthur wrestled himself free. He knew that he had to look away from the man on the stairs at some point but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. The man’s eyes were sweeping over the room, sweeping over Arthur and beyond him until they suddenly snapped back to him and his expression became one of smirking amusement.

“Merlin!” Gwaine cheered, appearing from down the hallway.

Merlin looked away from Arthur, his face bursting into a delighted smile when he spotted his old friend. He hurdled down the few remaining steps and threw his arms wide until Gwaine took a laughing step back.

“What the fuck do you have all over you?”

“Body paint” Merlin shot Gwaine a wink. “It’s edible.”

Arthur hadn’t noticed that he’d crossed the small sitting room to stand in the doorway and watch this exchange until Gwaine ducked around Merlin’s semi-naked frame to grab Arthur’s arm.

“Merlin, this is-”

“Arthur Pendragon, I’m aware” Merlin’s voice was syrupy smooth and the way his lips curled around Arthur’s name sent a shiver through him.

“How does everyone know who I am?!” Arthur repeated in exasperation.

Merlin only laughed and Arthur wondered if he imagined the man’s eyes flickering down his body and back up again. “Wanna play a game?” Merlin offered and Gwaine cheered, dragging Arthur along with him into the kitchen.

The beer pong that had been set up was unassembled. The ornate dining room table was out of place and much too large in the tiny kitchen. The table top was ringed with condensation and spilled alcohol and was wiped down quickly before Merlin threw a white table cloth across it with a flourish that reminded Arthur of a magician about to make something disappear. Merlin handed something to Gwaine and Arthur realised it was a little pot of the pink paint that decorated his torso. He then climbed on top of the table and lay down on his back. Gwaine handed Merlin back the paint, who uncapped the paint and drew a line from his navel right up the centre of his body, up over his chin and as far as his lips. The paint glided easily over his bare chest.

“Here’s how it works” Merlin started, propping himself up on his elbows. “If you make it all the way up the line, you get a shot. Try not to chicken out.”

The first contestant was Will, who made it halfway up Merlin’s stomach before he burst into giggles and couldn’t go on. Gwaine pushed him aside confidently and stepped up as Merlin redrew the line before lying back on the table again. The table was only long enough to fit Merlin’s torso so his legs hung off the edge. Instead of approaching the man’s body from the side as Will had done, Gwaine placed himself between the man’s legs, braced his arms either side of Merlin’s hips and lowered his mouth until it met vibrant pink paint. Arthur could only stare as Gwaine’s tongue travelled the length of Merlin’s torso and Merlin’s head tilted back to hang over the edge of the table until Gwaine approached his neck and he brought his head back up. His Adam’s apple quivered as Gwaine’s tongue continued its path over it, up the underside of his chin and right up to his lips. However Gwaine didn’t stop there. Suddenly, Gwaine was kissing him and Merlin was pulling him down on top of him.

Arthur felt his face ignite as the small crowd of people around him either gasped or cheered the two on. Something made him pull his gaze away from the spectacle playing out in front of him and risk a glance at his friends. The expressions he observed fell between various stages of surprise or disgust. Rather than acknowledging the way that their reactions annoyed him, he looked back at the two men on the table.

Gwaine pulled away first, smirking down at a now very dishevelled Merlin. “Looks like I win. Shots for me.”

Merlin laughed, dragging the back of a hand across his mouth. “Next victim!” he declared, jumping to his feet. “Arthur.”

“Oh no” Arthur breathed. “No, really, I-”

“Get over here and take off your shirt.”

“No, I- I really don’t want to.”

“Man up, Pendragon” Gwaine chided him as he carefully poured gold-flaked vodka into a tiny plastic shot glass. “Take your goddamn top off and get on the table.”

He couldn’t even begin to articulate how much he didn’t want to do that, but he gave in, unbuttoned his shirt and sat on the edge of the table. Merlin was standing over him and grinning, the pink paint in his hand. He put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder and pushed him down until he was on his back, his open shirt falling away to bare his skin. Gwaine handed Merlin a plastic shot glass, which he had filled to the top.

“Stay still” Merlin murmured and balanced the glass on Arthur’s sternum.

The paint was cold as it touched his skin. He winced and stayed as still as he could. The little brush contained in the pot’s lid tickled as Merlin gently dragged it from his bellybutton to the shot glass that rested mid-chest. He watched as Merlin handed the paint back to Gwaine and kept his eyes on his friend for a moment, looking for the smallest trace of support or guidance or anything-

Merlin’s warm tongue, as it made first contact with his hollow stomach, startled him. He drew a sharp quick breath, jostling the shot glass and sending some of the clear liquid sloshing over the sides. “Still” Merlin breathed the warning onto his skin and straddled his legs.

Arthur stared in wide-eyed wonder as Merlin’s dark head bent down to his skin and moved up his body. He was hyper-aware of the confident trail the other man’s tongue left up his torso. It was also at that moment that Arthur noticed Merlin’s ears for the first time. Maybe it was just the angle but they seemed oversized in comparison to the rest of his head. Merlin flicked his vibrant eyes up at Arthur- dispelling all thoughts of ears- as his mouth closed around the shot glass and he tilted his head back, downing it in one swift gulp before he spat the shot glass on the floor, grinning victoriously. It took Arthur a moment to realise Merlin had gotten off him and they were all waiting for him to get up and pick someone.

“Eh, you” he said, pointing at random and landing on a rather plain looking girl in a cartoon t-shirt. She giggled and pulled her t-shirt over her head. He did up his own shirt and rather than taking his turn to lick the stranger, he slipped around the guests to get access to the sink and wash off the remnants of paint with a dampened paper towel. The game continued until Merlin decided he was running low on paint and called it quits. As people went back to whatever it was they had been previously doing, Arthur took the opportunity to let himself out the back door for fresh air. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been sitting there cross-legged on the cold ground with just his phone’s flashlight to dispel the darkness when the door opened and someone stepped out.

He was surprised to see Merlin stood over him, now dressed in a black hoodie over his leather pants and a pair of slippers on his feet. The older man looked at him for a moment before he took a seat on the ground next to him. “That you?” he asked, nodding towards the pool of vomit in the grass.

Arthur blushed and nodded. Merlin shrugged, placing a cigarette between his lips and lighting it before offering him a drag. He declined the offer and they sat in silence a moment.

 “You know,” Merlin began. “I’m sorry for making you participate in the game earlier. I could see you were uncomfortable.”

“No, it’s fine. I enjoyed it.” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. He grimaced and dragged a hand down his face.

Merlin chuckled, a low breathy sound that was insanely erotic in ways Arthur couldn’t even begin to comprehend. “In that case, so did I,” Merlin returned and winked at him.

“So, uh… You and Gwaine?” Arthur’s question was awkward and clumsy as it tumbled from his lips.

Merlin gave a lazy one-shouldered shrug. “We hook up sometimes.”

“I didn’t know he was…”

“Gay? He’s not. We just hook up sometimes.”

There were a few more minutes of silence where Merlin smoked and Arthur wondered when he had lost all social capabilities and become such a loser. He seemed to be on a roll of saying the wrong thing tonight. Merlin stubbed out his cigarette on the ground next to him and started to stand up, but then stopped and sank back down on his knees. “Yes or no?” he asked.

“Yes” Arthur said, without knowing what he was even agreeing to.

In an instant, Merlin’s lips were on his, softly coaxing a response from the startled blond. Arthur's eyes closed instinctively as he noticed the taste of Merlin's mouth: cigarette smoke, cheap beer, and- was that... strawberry? He figured it was the body paint he tasted, but the artificial fruit flavour made him hungry and he greedily returned the kisses as if they could somehow fill the hollow void in his stomach. He felt Merlin's hand close around the back of his neck and pull him closer until Merlin's sharp knees pressed into his legs. The gasping breath that he took melted into a groan somewhere in the back of his throat, which had Merlin laughing as he kissed him, a short noise of amusement that reverberated against his mouth and down his spine until he shivered, trying to shake the hold that such a simple sound had over him. He didn't understand it, why everything Merlin did both fascinated and confused him. Something about the other man made him feel screamingly self-aware and he felt embarrassed for being everything that he was.

Merlin was laughing as he broke the kiss. "Damn, Pendragon."

Arthur blushed. "Sorry."

"Nothing to apologize for" Merlin winked at him again and Arthur swallowed the anxious lump in his throat. Merlin got to his feet and stretched his arms above his head, an almost feline-like purr rumbling from his chest as his back cracked. Arthur had to look away to hide the deep shade of crimson his cheeks had taken on. "Hey," Merlin said, commanding his attention again. "You should come find me later."

Come find me later. Arthur knew what that meant. He had used that line countless times himself on strangers at parties. It meant _"I'm going to play the field a little while longer but right now, you're my best option"_. It meant _"I'm up for it if you are" and "I'm not drunk enough for this"._ It meant _"fuck me later"._

"Okay" he replied his throat dry and voice hoarse from disuse.

Merlin shot him a final smirking smile and went back inside. Arthur stayed sat on the ground until the light on his phone had gone out, wondering what on earth had possessed him to agree to that, to any of what had just happened. Finally, after the cold had seeped into his bones, he got up and let himself back inside. As he closed the door behind himself, he glanced up and met the cold, large eyes of Mordred, looking at him with that supernatural knowing. The strange boy turned away and walked back into the living room. Only then did Arthur let himself breathe.

"Pendragon!" The sudden exclamation of his name made him jump. He spun to see Percy, Leon and Lance approaching him from across the kitchen. "Where did you disappear to?"

"Just... outside" Arthur jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the door behind him. "I was too warm."

“So, what did you think of Gwaine’s… display with that guy earlier?”

The fact that Arthur couldn’t read Percy’s expression when he spoke worried him. He scanned the large man’s features for the slightest hint of feeling- disgust, amusement, indifference- but found nothing. He shrugged, deeming it the safest response. “Each to their own.”

“Hmh.”

Something told him this wasn’t a noise of agreement. He didn’t know if it was the alcohol or a building resentment for his friends in general, but he could feel his temper fraying. “You clearly have some thoughts yourself on it” he forced out, trying to keep his tone as even as possible but there was a telling shortness to his words.

Percy shifted his weight awkwardly, “It’s just a little weird, don’t you think?”

“No, actually, I don’t” Arthur returned bluntly.

“I think” Lance started, slipping himself between the two men who were now regarding each other through narrowed eyes, “What he was trying to say is, that it was just… surprising.”

“Hmh” Arthur repeated back and wandered away to get himself another drink. He could feel the wordless glances that were exchanged behind his back and the way Lance frowned in his direction, the way he always did when someone in the group got upset over something. Arthur figured he _was_ upset. There was something about the judgement and silent disapproval present in the seemingly innocent question that caused a kind of panic to settle in Arthur’s stomach, like he’d just been caught in an elaborate lie, the type of lie he couldn’t bring himself to even acknowledge telling. Instead, he upturned a can of sickeningly sweet cider that he knicked from a box on a counter by the fridge and ignored the way the sugar seemed to rush to his head, getting there before the alcohol did. The cider didn’t burn the way he usually liked his drinks to, but it would do.

*

There was a story being told and it was apparently quite hilarious, judging from the reactions of the people around him, but Arthur’s attention had been flitting in and out every few lines for the past half hour. He was too tired to laugh along with the others. He glanced around briefly and spotted Gwaine enter the room. He noticed him sat on the couch and made his way over to sit on the arm of the chair. Arthur felt a little awkward, aware that the man had kept his distance from his friends for most of the night. Arthur gave him a smile, hoping to convey a message he hadn’t quite formulated yet.

“He’s been watching you, you know” Gwaine murmured, just low enough for only Arthur to hear.

Arthur flicked his eyes up until they met Merlin’s and he quickly dropped his gaze to his drink again. Oh God, he wanted Merlin to _stop looking at him like that_. He was looking at Arthur with eyebrows raised, lips slightly parted and head tilted just a little. It was a look of expectation, enough to make his heartbeat pick up.

“I think he wants to talk you” Gwaine smirked.

Arthur got up and with a final fleeting glance at Merlin, walked out of the sitting room to the narrow hallway. A moment later, Merlin appeared next to him.

“I thought I was supposed to find you, not the other way around.”

For a moment, Merlin looked surprised and just blinked at him. “It makes jokes.”

“When it wants to” Arthur flushed.

“And what else does it want?”

Arthur couldn’t respond, only look away bashfully.

Merlin chuckled, that sound that made Arthur want to both jump his bones and run as far away as his shaking legs could carry him. “Come upstairs with me.”

Arthur nodded, too mesmerised by the smooth quality of the request, equal parts a question and a command. Merlin took the lead and Arthur followed, aware that everyone in the sitting room could look up at any point and see them together. The thought terrified him and he mentally willed Merlin to walk faster but no amount of mental coaxing could get the man to quicken his relaxed saunter. It took every ounce of his willpower not to glance over his shoulder and check who was watching.

Merlin led him to a room at the end of the narrow hallway. He pushed open the door and they were greeted with strings of fairy lights strung from wall to wall in obscure patterns. There were only two items of furniture in the room, a chest-of-drawers pushed up into one corner and a bed in the other. The occasional item of clothing was scattered across the floor and there was piles of books everywhere, stacked high on top of each other, against the wall, on top of the drawers, by the bed.

“If you make the bookshelf comment, I’m kicking you out.”

“I wasn’t going to” Arthur lied.

“Good. My shelf fell down. I’ll get around to it eventually.”

“Did you bring me here to discuss furniture?” Arthur wasn’t sure where this verbal confidence was coming from because he sure as hell didn’t feel it, but it made Merlin smirk at him and he found himself smirking back.

“Smartass, huh?” When Arthur gave a shrug, Merlin gave him another wicked grin in response as he shut the door behind them. “It’s a good thing I like that.”

Merlin closed the gap between them and pressed short, teasing kisses against Arthur’s lips. “Or what?” Arthur managed between kisses. “You’ll kick me out?”

“As homeowner, that is well within my rights” Merlin laughed, shoving Arthur in the direction of the bed.

Their lips connected again as Arthur fell backwards onto the mattress and Merlin landed on top of him. The pressure on top of him was strange and familiar all at once and entirely welcome. He felt Merlin shift on top of him until he was pinning him down and Arthur figured he should probably panic but when Merlin’s mouth began to travel down his jawline and approached his neck, he flat out forgot. The presence of teeth pressed just below his ear made his whole body jerk and he let out a growl of warning. Merlin took this as encouragement and became more liberal with his teeth until Arthur figured his entire neck would be black and blue by morning and he wouldn’t be able to deny or hide them. Instead of worrying him enough to push the other man off of him, this knowledge only excited him further.

Merlin’s hand slid below the hem of his shirt and he felt long, thin fingers glide across the skin just above his belt. Arthur drew a breath through his teeth as Merlin’s hand wandered too close to the centre of his stomach and he jerked away. The movement redirected Merlin’s hand to the buckle of his belt and saw the man look at him with amusement before he deftly undid Arthur’s belt and Arthur was struck once more with a wave of embarrassment that he couldn’t explain- whether it was embarrassment over the way he’d squirmed away from a single touch but writhed under the rest. He knew he’d be embarrassed to be so turned on by a guy he’d only just met if he let himself consider that thought, but instead, he vehemently pushed this thought away every time it tried to resurface. What was he doing here?

Merlin’s hand dipped briefly into his jeans but withdrew a single second later. He moved his hands to the buttons of Arthur’s shirt. “Yes or no?” he panted.

“Yes” Arthur responded eagerly. He balled his fists and watched as Merlin undid each button swiftly and without faltering. He pushed the fabric from Arthur’s shoulders, who willingly shrugged out of it and let it fall to the mattress beneath him. Merlin caught his lips again and Arthur groaned as hands were run over his bare chest.

The kisses continued until neither one of them could be satisfied by roaming hands or bitten lips any longer and Merlin was the first to grind his hips down against Arthur and gasped. Arthur grabbed Merlin’s leather-clad hips and pulled them down against his own. It was a different kind of friction, unlike anything he’d ever felt before, that made his eyes roll and his breath hitch until his toes curled inside his Converse that kicked at the edge of the sheets. Merlin rolled his hips with the same effortless grace with which he did everything and Arthur could still find traces of that constant amusement behind the lust in his eyes. It was too much for Arthur to take and he turned his head away and closed his eyes as another moan escaped his mouth.

They flew open again as he felt the weight of Merlin’s hand back on his stomach, but it slid down and over the front of his jeans where it rested for a moment and applied enough pressure to make Arthur buck against it to replace the friction lost. It meandered up a little bit to take his button between long fingers.

And then came the question he craved: “Yes or no?”

He nodded furiously and expected the sensation to continue, but it didn’t.

“I need the word ‘yes’ otherwise it’s not a yes” Merlin told him.

Arthur opened his mouth to give him the word he wanted but choked on a breath that got caught in the back of his mouth and obscured his airway. He tried again to fill his lungs and push out the singular syllable but he couldn’t. He couldn’t catch his breath at all, no matter how hard he tried. Before long, he was gasping and Merlin was jumping away from him. He sat up much too quickly and was met with dizzying nausea and a fresh wave of panic that had him gripping fistfuls of bedsheets. In an instant, the whole situation had become too much and Arthur didn’t know what to do anymore, not that he ever had in the first place because what the fuck was he even doing anyway-

“Hey, hey, calm down.” He could just about hear Merlin’s voice over the clamouring of his heartbeat in his ears. “It’s okay. We don’t have to do this.”

“No?”

“No, of course not.”

The absence of weight bearing down on him, of touches and rising apprehension that he couldn’t fully control, did a lot to alleviate his panic. He drew a long slow breath and pushed it out just as slowly. His heart, sated by this, slowed also. He repeated the action. “I’m sorry” he said. The embarrassment that gripped him seemed to be becoming a permanent feature.

“Don’t be.” For a moment, he thought Merlin was smiling at him, but he realised almost too late that it wasn’t a smile at all. “I can get it somewhere else.”

The detached smirk was the last thing he saw before Merlin turned his back on him and he was left sitting in the sparse, fairy-lit room, gripping cold sheets in shaking hands, alone and hating himself.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gonna be entirely honest and say I'm not as happy with this chapter as I have been with previous chapters. I know it's shorter than usual and probably not as well written, but I have been incredibly ill for the past few weeks.  
> Massive thank you to everyone who's read, left kudos and commented on previous chapters. I really love reading your comments and your thoughts on this, because this fic genuinely means a lot to me. I'm probably way too invested in it, but let's pretend otherwise.  
> Shout-out once again to my betas. Half of my sentences wouldn't even make sense without them

_“All my life, I've been fighting a war,_  
 _I can't talk to you or your friends,_  
 _It's not only you,_  
 _My heart jumps around when I'm alluded to,_  
 _This will not do"_  
**Bravado- Lorde**

-

Arthur was aware of the cold space where a warm body had previously lain next to him. He kept his eyes closed in a desperate attempt to cling to sleep, but consciousness was already seeping in. After Merlin had left him last night, Arthur had managed to calm himself down but, too mortified to leave the room and return to the party, had kicked off his shoes, folded his shirt on top of them and crawled into the mess of blankets that constituted Merlin’s bed. He was woken a few hours later by Merlin crawling in next to him but fell asleep again before the other man could comment. He wasn’t surprised that he’d woken up alone either.

He sat up and was slipping on his shirt and cursing himself for sleeping in his jeans when the door opened and Merlin walked in again, hair damp and a towel wrapped around his shoulders. It seemed the man was entirely averse to wearing a shirt as once more he was dressed in just dark jeans and Arthur’s eyes were immediately drawn to the marks littered around the man’s torso and up his neck. He blushed and became aware of his own similarly marred body.

“You’re awake” Merlin commented.

“Yeah” Arthur’s eyes danced away. “Sorry about crashing like that.”

“Don’t worry about it. I prefer not to sleep alone anyway.” Merlin threw the towel down on top of the dresser on a rare space not littered with books.

He bit back a remark about how it looked like Merlin was anything but alone last night, but instead focused his attention on his shoes.

“Emrys!” someone shouted from downstairs and Merlin rolled his eyes before shouting back that he’d be down in a second. “Will’s making breakfast downstairs. You better go place an order if you want to eat.”

He didn’t, but Arthur nodded anyway and wandered downstairs. In the kitchen, he found Will frying bacon in a pink apron with Gwaine, Mordred and a girl he vaguely recognized from last night sat at the kitchen table eating. He took a seat without meeting anyone’s eyes, breathing through the way the smell and sound of sizzling bacon grease made his stomach turn.

“Pendragon, you want the last of the bacon?” Will asked.

He declined the offer and asked for a glass of water instead. He looked up with a smile of gratitude ready on his lips as the glass was placed in front of him, until he saw who had put it there. Gwaine was looking down at him with a look of knowing and for a second, Arthur wasn’t sure whether he was about to lose his temper or start crying. How did everyone seem to know so much when he himself didn’t know the first fucking thing about anything?!

He was about to tear his gaze away from his friend when he spotted the marks peeking out from underneath the other man’s t-shirt, right where his neck met his shoulder and suddenly Arthur knew. He knew that Gwaine could see the same marks on him and they both knew who had left them there. It seemed Arthur had found Merlin’s “somewhere else”.

He felt his face ignite and looked down into his glass of water like it were about to tell him something. He didn’t need to look up to know that Mordred was staring at him over his toast because he could feel the weight of the boy’s eyes on him, boring into him like they could draw confessions from Arthur’s lips, send secrets spilling from him and confirm the suspicions the boy surely held. His annoyance grew, along with the feeling of being trapped, and he reached down to retrieve his phone from his jeans pocket. It seemed his only talent in life was not losing this thing. He waved the metallic iPhone vaguely. “Anyone got a charger I can borrow?”

The girl- Freya, he learned- pulled a charger out of the chunky handbag by her feet and passed it to him. He excused himself to the sitting room where he found a socket by the armchair, plugged the charger in and collapsed into the battered seat. After a few minutes, the phone came to life and instantly, Arthur was alerted to a few missed calls and multiple text messages. He dismissed the notification without checking any of them. He stared down at the device long after the screen had locked and gone dark. His mind was wandering and he was only half following it, ambling after it down the winding path it was taking through a densely wooded area of normally forbidden thoughts.

“Someone looks deep in thought.” Arthur’s head snapped up at the sound of Merlin’s voice and saw the man stood before him with a black trash bag in hand, scooping up discarded plastic cups and fallen bottles. “Wanna share?”

Arthur had opened his mouth to reply before the logical, self-esteem preserving side of his brain interrupted and asked him did he really want to answer that question and risk further social mortification, but he decided he did. “Do you ever sometimes feel like your life isn’t real? Like everything is just one big, long, fucked up dream? Or maybe everyone and everything around you is actually happening and it’s you who isn’t real…I don’t know” he concluded dumbly, wishing it were as easy to force out all this word vomit as it was actual vomit.

“Cartesian scepticism, I like it.”

Arthur wasn’t sure he knew what either of those words meant so he just pursed his lips and nodded.

“The way I see it” Merlin continued a few moments later, still diligently gathering rubbish into the bag, “Even if it’s not real, even if it’s all some fantastic illusion, who says you can’t enjoy it? Live the dream, so to speak.”

Arthur hadn’t expected Merlin to indulge him like this but he took the strange conversation in both his shaking hands and ran with it. “Shouldn’t I be worried that my life doesn’t feel real?”

“Not at all. Doubting everything you hold dear is one of the cornerstones of philosophy.”

“Are we really discussing the cornerstones of philosophy at-” he paused to check the time on his phone, “-11.23am?”

Merlin laughed. “You’re talking to a former philosophy student. I’m always discussing the cornerstones of something.”

“Where did you study?”

“Camelot. But I dropped out in my third year.” Merlin caught the look of interest on Arthur’s face and shrugged **.** “The whole university structure wasn’t for me. Turns out deadlines, morning classes and being held accountable aren’t really my thing.”

“Did you not enjoy it?”

“The subject, yes. The course itself, fuck no. It was draining the life out of something I loved and out of me, too. I was miserable. I wanted to expand my mind and learn for the sake of learning and instead, I found myself lost with no direction or understanding. So I quit and now my mind gets expanded on my terms.”

Arthur wasn’t sure how to feel about that, as he took a moment to imagine himself in the same situation. Part of him found the prospect exhilarating but mostly, he found it terrifying. He couldn’t imagine having that much control over anything. The weight of that kind of decision was overwhelming and he didn’t trust himself to make calls that big. He shook the thoughts from his head. Was this really the same man who was licking paint off his body just hours before? His stomach lurched and he quickly pressed a fist to his mouth to supress a gag. Merlin looked at him and he passed it off a yawn, unplugging his phone and pocketing the device. “I should go” he said.

“If you wait, you can split a cab with Gwaine. He ordered one a few minutes ago.”

Staying was the very last thing Arthur wanted to do, but he nodded and did his best to look anywhere but Merlin. Merlin cleaned, Arthur waited. Neither spoke.

It felt like a small eternity before Merlin was ushering all of his remaining guests out of the house and Arthur and Gwaine were sliding into the backseat of a taxi. He couldn’t tell at first if Gwaine was ignoring him or just being polite as he only spoke to the driver and didn’t exchange so much as a single syllable with Arthur. He wasn’t sure he cared either way. He pulled out his phone again and checked the previously ignored messages from the night before. A few were from an unknown number but signed as Gwen, charting from the moment of her realisation that he’d gone to her disappointed resignation that he wouldn’t be back that night, but firmly letting him know that he’d be in trouble when he finally returned. This stream of consciousness was interrupted by a single text from Morgana saying she’d sort it out and not to worry. The final text, the most recent, was another unknown number and had been sent less than an hour ago. He didn’t need to open it to read it and the one word was enough to send his alcohol-laden stomach into a sudden freefall, and if he didn’t feel like a fragment already, he would have felt himself go to pieces.

It read: _Eat._

*

The pounding in his head was replaced by a one-worded mantra of “ _Eat, eat, eat”_ as he dragged his shuffling feet up the loose-stone driveway to the front door. He leaned a shoulder against the hard brick of the porch, not trusting his legs to hold him up any longer, as he rang the doorbell and waited to be let in. The word repeated over and over in a surging tide, rushing in loudly before falling away again, like a mocking imitation of his own heartbeat. Sometimes the word was whispered in soft concern. Others, it was shouted at him or sneered cruelly, berating him for his weakness. A hand shot out to grasp at the cold concrete wall that was the only thing holding him up. His nails scratched against stone as he struggled to get a hold of something as his legs just gave up.

“Arthur?”

Gwen was standing in the doorway, looking at him with concern. A moment later, Morgana appeared over her shoulder. Arthur pushed himself from the wall, nearly startled by how steady he managed to appear. “Hi” he said lamely.

“You okay there, bro?” He could hear concern under Morgana’s amused tone.

“Falling asleep on my feet.” He gave a laugh as the women stepped aside and let him in.

“That’s what happens when you disappear all night” Gwen chided him and Arthur winced before turning to face her.

“I’m sorry for sneaking out like that. I understand that you’re angry at me and you can tell my father if you feel you need to. I disobeyed you both and I apologise. If it’s any consolation, I had a pretty shit time.”

Morgana glided up behind him and began prodding the bites and marks on his neck. “Doesn’t look like evidence of a shit time.”

Arthur batted her away. “Does personal space mean nothing to you?!”

“Not a thing.”

He glowered at her before turning back to Gwen, who was still yet to speak. “If you’re going to yell at me, can it wait until I’ve had a cup of tea? And maybe a nap?”

“I’m not going to yell at you” Gwen began with a soft sigh. “I’m not angry, just disappointed.”

Arthur looked over at his half-sister in confusion. The wink she shot him said everything he needed to know. She had talked to Gwen last night, about their father, no doubt, and this was Gwen being understanding. Or at least as understanding as her current position would allow. “Go to bed, brother. You look like shit warmed up.”

He ignored the overwhelming urge to either retort or flip her off and made his way up the stairs, managing to stay upright just long enough to discard his clothes before falling into bed. All thoughts of Merlin and the mystery text message were pushed from his mind as sleep consumed him.

*

Morgana had waited until Arthur has woken up well into the evening to say goodbye to him. The next day was his last with Gwen before his father returned the following morning and Arthur could see from the tension in Gwen’s frame that she was as apprehensive about Uther’s arrival as Arthur was. He did his best to distract her, and in turn, himself, by offering to do as much as he could. He assisted in making the meals that he didn’t actually eat, did the dishes, and helped her sort through the dwindling pile of paperwork she’d been ploughing through all week. As the evening drew in, he surprised them both by asking if she wanted to watch a movie with him and tried not to smile too much when she agreed. His astonishment was apparent on his face when she picked _The Hangover_ as he hadn’t pegged her as a comedy fan but then he realised she may have been teasing him about the previous day in a very subtle way that he appreciated. He found himself enjoying his time with her, laughing together and chatting occasionally about the topics they both deemed the safest and least intrusive, and he wondered if this was what it was like to have a friend and not just an associate or a follower. There was an awareness in the both of them of the fragility of this moment, that it would end and likely never be repeated. They would go their separate ways in the morning, assume their roles once more and consider themselves lucky if they ever encountered each other again, even in passing.

He remembered that feeling when he woke late the next afternoon and could feel his father’s presence in the house once more. He stayed in his room as long as he could but knew he would eventually have to make an appearance. He dressed and trudged downstairs and found his father sitting where Gwen had sat for the previous week. He asked the questions he knew his father was waiting for and once his tea was made, he brought it to his room. As usual, the sugar eased the shaking, the heat warmed his vacant body but instead of the drink creating the illusion of feeling full, the liquid sat heavily in his stomach and sloshed about every time he moved. He lay on his bed clutching his stomach until he was called for dinner.

He decided that if he lasted more than twenty minutes sat at the dining room table, listening to his father speaking _at_ him rather than _to_ him, and cramming food into his already rebelling stomach, then he would devote the remainder of his life to serving the God who must clearly exist for such a miracle to occur. He would don the black and give up sex. He could do it, it didn’t even mean that much to him anyway. Maybe he would finally find a purpose in life.

However, he only managed a couple of bites and copious amounts of water before he was practically begging to be excused, so any higher power who thought they may have had a claim to him would have to wait.

He managed to keep an even pace until he reached the second floor landing, at which point he broke into a run until he was falling to his knees in front of the toilet in his bathroom. It didn’t take much force to bring up everything that was weighing his body down. His entire body heaved and convulsed as it struggled to evict every last ounce of everything he’d consumed. It wasn’t until he stood up and caught sight of himself in the mirror above the sink that he saw the way his lips were stained red. He flicked his tongue out experimentally and was met with the copper rust taste of blood. He reached for the faucet to wash his hands and noticed that the knuckles of his index and middle fingers torn open and dripping blood down the rest of his hand. The cold water stung but cleaned the blood away and he could see where his teeth had scrapped over the acid worn skin and ripped them open. He found some Band-Aids in a cabinet and covered his fingers just enough to stop the bleeding before falling into bed.

The contents of the text message returned to him, a command in an unknown voice, and he wondered just who had sent it. He got his phone and pulled up the text again to check the time stamp. He must have received it sometime between waking up and when he sat down to charge his phone. He hadn’t seen anyone in the kitchen with their phones out.

He looked down at the message again and heard Merlin’s voice telling him, “Eat.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is literally my fourth draft of this chapter. I went through three different plot lines, discarded approximately 6000 words and then my laptop had to be sent away for repairs. This is eventually what happened.
> 
> Thanks again to Bree for kicking my ass into gear.  
> (I couldn't help myself from slipping a Hamilton lyric in here. Bonus points if you spot it.)

_"Now I thought about what I wanna say_  
_But I never really know where to go_  
 _So I chained myself to a friend_  
 _Cause I know it unlocks like a door_ "  
**Instant Crush- Daft Punk  
-**

Arthur wondered how long he could stay in his room before he either became a certifiable recluse or died, whichever happened first. His bedside table was littered with discarded mugs of tea, all of which he’d consumed that day, the last of them had sent him running to the bathroom just on time to throw up warm brown water. He rolled onto his side, turning his back to the graveyard of mugs. The walls felt suspiciously closer together than they had done before and Arthur wondered if this was what the beginning of madness felt like.

He had to do something. His plan of sitting around until someone called with a better prospect wasn’t exactly going to, well, plan. Merlin’s voice danced around his mind like echoes bouncing off the walls of an empty cave. Pulling his MacBook from where he’d stashed it under his bed, it took a few attempts to get the correct spelling of “Cartesian Scepticism” but Google knew what he wanted and gave it to him despite his clumsy typing.

_“Cartesian doubt is a systematic process of being sceptical about (or doubting) the truth of one's beliefs, which has become a characteristic method in philosophy.”_

Instead of pondering the depths of what he’d just read, Arthur could only think of Merlin’s grin as the phrase flowed thoughtfully from his lips. Before he knew it, two hours had passed and he was a dozen pages deep in Wikipedia, reading about Plato’s allegory of the cave and wondering if his entire life was just comprised of shadows and no depth, if anyone ever really left the cave at all.

The rumbling vibrations of his phone broke him from his Wikipedia crash course. He felt his brow crease in confusion as Gwaine’s name illuminated his screen, but he answered the call anyway as he clicked an annotation that brought him to a new theory.

“Hey, man” he could hear Gwaine’s grin in his greeting. “You up to anything tonight?”

“Not really” he responded.

“Cool. I was wondering if you wanted to hang out tonight.”

“Hang out?”

Arthur’s friends did not ‘hang out’. Something about the exchange felt distinctly like a trap. But he agreed anyway, knowing that any more time spent in his bedroom would likely result in his own demise. He showered and changed quickly, trying to ignore the gaunt sleeplessness that had settled into his features and made his eyes look small against his face. He tore the soggy, bloodstained Band-Aids from the back of his hand and replaced them with fresh ones.

It was still early in the evening, the sun still high and bright, but the walk to Gwaine’s was the best part of an hour so he called himself a cab. The taxi driver didn’t make any attempt to chat with him, which he appreciated, but he knew was accredited to how haggard and on the brink of a nervous breakdown he looked. He divided his attention between the passing scenery out the window and his shaking, badly bandaged hands that were clasped in his lap. When he looked up again, the driver was looking at him expectantly from the front seat. Arthur threw a twenty pound note at the man and scrambled from the car, letting the door fall shut behind him.

He’d been to Gwaine’s apartment a few times, usually after nights out when he needed somewhere to crash but rarely had he ever been here alone and never sober. Gwaine had his hair tied back when he answered the door, dressed in grey sweatpants and an Irish rugby jersey. He invited Arthur inside with a wave of his hand. The apartment was smaller than Arthur’s bedroom, a sitting room and kitchenette all mushed into one, with a small bedroom with an en-suite off to the side. Arthur crossed the room to sit on the couch. An abandoned game of FIFA was displayed on the TV screen.

 “Tea? Can? Tap water?” Gwaine offered.

Arthur laughed at the other man’s attempt at hosting. “I’ll take a can.”

The can that was thrown across the room at him was a cheap foreign beer that he never would have chosen himself, but it would do. The next thing his uncoordinated hands had to catch was a controller being thrown at him. He fumbled with it but managed to keep it from hitting the floor.

The situation was strange to him but not unpleasant. He imagined this was what normal people his age did, as he won his third match in a row and Gwaine knocked down the stack of empty beer cans they had crafted over the last two hours.

“Fuck this” Gwaine muttered and lit the joint he had rolled one-handed during the last game.

With a laugh, Arthur leaned over and plucked it from the other man’s mouth. “You’re just a sore loser.”

“I’ll show you sore if you don’t shut up.”

“Was that a proposition?”

“Well, I know you swing that way now.”

Arthur handed him back the joint and fixed his gaze determinedly on the carpet.

“Or maybe not” Gwaine added.

The last thing Arthur wanted to discuss with Gwaine was Merlin. He didn’t want to be reminded of Merlin walking away from him, walking away to find Gwaine. He wondered if they talked about him, if Gwaine had known at the time where Merlin had just been moments before. The look in Gwaine’s eyes the next morning, the realisation that had struck them both in the same moment, was still fresh in Arthur’s memory, as was the pull in his chest.

“It doesn’t matter who you sleep with anyway. What matters is I’m going to kick your ass at the next game.”

“In your actual dreams” Arthur shot back with a grin.

Gwaine was much better at first-person shooters than he was at sports simulators and Arthur’s winning streak came to a crashing halt. “You fucking suck at this game” Gwaine teased him.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. This game is for twelve year olds anyway.”

Neither could agree on the next game so the controllers were abandoned in favour of more cans and another joint, rolled properly with the use of both hands this time.

“We should go out” Gwaine announced.

“I’m perfectly comfortable here” Arthur replied from where he was lying on the floor.

“Well, I’m out of alcohol so I want to go out.”

Arthur pushed himself into a sitting position. “I’m not sure I’m up for another party, man.”

“Nah, I mean like the pub or something.”

He considered this. It had been months since he’d been in a pub. “Yeah, I guess.”

Gwaine changed into a pair of jeans and the two set out to the bar down the street from Gwaine’s flat. Arthur had been here once before and remembered it had been full of hipsters. As they stepped into the shiny wooden interior, he realised the place was once again full of hipsters. A soccer match played quietly on the large screens fixed around the place but was mostly ignored by the patrons.

“Order me a pint, will you? I gotta pee.”

Arthur nodded and made his way to the bar. As he ordered drinks from the bar tender in the flannel shirt, he thought he heard someone call his name. Brushing it off, he kept his attention on the drinks that were being placed in front of him. He paid for the round and had just turned around to find a seat when he heard someone shout, “Oi! Pendragon!”

Gwaine was standing by an occupied table and waving him over. He took a few steps towards the table before he noticed just who was sat there. Two heads of dark hair, four intense blue eyes. He handed Gwaine his drink and sat down next to Mordred, directly opposite Merlin.

“Hey” Merlin smiled at him.

“Hi” he returned.

He had no idea what to say beyond that and was glad for Will to come barrelling over to the table, ranting about the match. Sport was something that had been socially ingrained in Arthur; he could talk about it for hours, even though he didn’t especially care for it either way. He felt himself beginning to relax as conversation drifted naturally across various topics. Sometimes, he contributed, other times, he held back. But he found himself laughing and once again, he imagined that this is what normal people did.

Mordred brought the next round on a tray with enviable grace. One by one, he took drinks from the tray and handed them around. Mordred’s fingers brushed the bandages on the back of Arthur’s hand as he passed him the pint glass and Arthur refused to look down at their hands, praying that if he didn’t acknowledge it, Mordred wouldn’t either. Mordred’s expression was impassable as the soft pads of his fingertips dragged against the harsh fabric of worn bandages. He looked like he wanted to say something but thankfully, he didn’t. Arthur released a shaky breath and brought his glass to his lips.

“What do you think, Pendragon?”

Suddenly, both Will and Gwaine were looking at him expectantly. He choked down a mouthful of beer. “I, uh, wasn’t listening. Sorry.”

Will scoffed at him and the two carried on the conversation without him.

“Something tells me football isn’t really your thing.” Amusement coloured Merlin’s tone as he regarded Arthur over the rim of his glass.

“Honestly, no. I don’t really care for it.”

“You seem to know a lot about it” Mordred interjected.

“It gives me something to talk about. Sport is a common ground, it transcends barriers.”

“Big word” Merlin teased him.

“I read” Arthur gave a laugh.

“I didn’t think you _could_ read.”

“I like to leave the cave sometimes” he mumbled into his drink, keeping his eyes on Merlin’s.

“And yet you always return to the shadows” Merlin mused.

“The shadows are what I know. We always go back to the places we find comfort.”

“Fuck me, Pendragon. That was downright poetic.”

Arthur felt his face ignite at Merlin’s choice of phrase. His mind brought forward the feeling of Merlin’s hands on his bare skin and he drained the rest of his pint, hoping to wash those sensations down with it.

“I have no idea what either of you are on about.” Gwaine’s voice reminded him that he and Merlin weren’t the only ones sat at the table. His cheeks coloured a deeper shade of red.

“Plato’s cave.” Mordred’s voice was quiet, so quiet Arthur nearly didn’t hear it.

He nodded. Merlin was looking at him with renewed interest. He couldn’t bear it.

He wobbled slightly as he stood, turned away from the table and strode to the bathroom with purpose. Once inside, he shut himself in a stall and took a series of slow, deep breaths. There was a weight in Merlin’s gaze. He had looked at Arthur as though he were seeing him with a new perspective, with new worth. He wasn’t sure anyone had ever looked at him like that.

His heart rate slowed. He felt a little stronger. He stepped out.

Mordred was standing by the sink, wiping damp hands on his black jeans. Arthur attempted a smile but didn’t quite achieve it. He suspected Mordred had come to see if he was okay. The notion made him uncomfortable. He turned to go. He stumbled once more.

Mordred stretched out an arm and steadied him. Though he’d grown used to the boy’s presence in the short time since they’d met, but there was something about the intensity of his touch that put Arthur on edge, like it was loaded with emotions, emotions Arthur didn’t even want to acknowledge in the first place.

“Cheers” he said in a voice about as steady as his gait.

Mordred gave a shallow smile. “Don’t let my cousin get to you.”

“Cousin?” Arthur repeated. “I should have seen that.”

Mordred gave a nod. Together, they returned to the table to find Merlin sitting alone.

“Ready to go?”

Mordred nodded once more. Arthur looked between the cousins and felt a stab of disappointment.

“I have to walk Mordred home, but do you wanna come back to the house? I actually have some books you might be interested in.”

Arthur was nodding before Merlin had even completed the offer. The three set off together, after Merlin confirmed that Gwaine and Will had teamed up to try and pull a hook-up for the latter.

“Do you guys live together?”

“No. I just spend a lot of time around Merlin’s” Mordred answered with what Arthur thought might have been a grin.

“A lot of people spend a lot of time at my place. It’s essentially a halfway house at this point.”

Mordred laughed at this. Arthur forced a smile. They walked in silence until they reached Mordred’s block. The cousins nodded at each other and said nothing. Arthur said an awkward goodbye and took a small amount of comfort in the knowledge that there were family dynamics as odd as his own. He followed Merlin through an unfamiliar neighbourhood. It was getting dark.

“So you’ve been reading.”

“Yeah. I was curious.”

“So I made you curious?”

“Yes. I mean no. I mean- Shut up.” Arthur begged the ground to swallow him whole. It didn’t comply.

“I think it’s admirable that you’ve been learning. I also think it’s kinda cool.”

His brow furrowed in confusion. “You do?”

“Of course. Enlightenment is extremely sexy.” They had arrived in front of a house that Arthur vaguely recognized from his last visit. Merlin unlocked the door and let them both in.

“I’ll bear that in mind” Arthur said, mostly to himself. Merlin shot him a grin.

“Always with the smart comments.”

“What can I say? I’m a terrible person.”

“Then how about you show me just how terrible you can be.”

His back hit the wall and then Merlin was kissing him. Arthur returned the kiss with equal ferocity, consumed by the familiar taste of Merlin. Cigarette smoke, beer and the faintest taste of strawberry replaced oxygen. Hands were everywhere, pushing, pulling, demanding. He slipped a hand behind Merlin’s neck, pulling their bodies together until it was the only thing keeping him upright. His legs threatened to give out at any moment so he was more than thankful when Merlin’s knee found its way between his thighs. The hand that had been gripping his hip drifted beneath Arthur’s shirt and left a trail of fire in its wake. The other drifted down to his ass and squeezed until he broke the kiss with a startled inhale.

“Damn, Pendragon, you’re downright despicable.”

Arthur gave Merlin a push in the general direction of the stairs. “Shut up.”

Kiss-slicked lips quirked upright into a smirk. “Eloquent as always.”

“Yes, I’m a regular poet laureate. Now, are you gonna climb those stairs or do I have to pay a toll?”

Merlin seemed to consider this. “I don’t know. I’m sorely tempted to just fuck you right here.”

Arthur blushed but was not entirely adverse to the idea. In fact, he rather liked the idea but his confidence didn’t extend as far as actually fucking right inside the front door. “I think I’d rather your bedroom.”

“That can be arranged.” Merlin grabbed him and dragged him up the stairs. His room was dark until he hit a switch and there were the fairy lights, lighting the room in a flurry of small colours. It was similarly messy to the last time Arthur had been in it.

“Can I make the bookshelf comment now?”

“Do you want to be kicked out? Because that can also be arranged.”

“No, sir.”

“‘Sir?’ I like that.”

With a grin, Arthur sat at the foot of the bed and watched as Merlin crossed the room and settled himself so that he was straddling Arthur’s lap. His hands gripped Merlin’s waist to keep him there. His lips parted expectantly but Merlin bypassed his mouth entirely to leave a trail of soft, feather-light kisses that began behind his ear and travelled the length of his neck, leaving him light headed and electrified. A soft bite at the base of his neck drew a low moan from his throat. Merlin made a noise of pleased amusement in response and rolled his hips. Arthur swore under his breath and tightened his hold on Merlin’s waist until he was certain that his hands would leave marks and decided that he was through with waiting for Merlin to kiss him again. He claimed Merlin’s lips in a demanding kiss and chased them when Merlin moved in surprise.

Part of him was intimidated by Merlin’s skill and experience and just how he’d come to possess them, but mostly, he was too consumed with wanting every last inch of the other man  to either know or care. He was so consumed by it that he nearly didn’t hear Merlin’s request of  “Let me up” until his hand were being batted away and Merlin was dropping to his knees between Arthur’s legs. Arthur swallowed roughly, aware of how hard Merlin’s ministrations had left him. But when Merlin licked his lips and unbuttoned Arthur’s jeans, the faint embarrassment that he felt disappeared.

“Shirt. Off. Now” Merlin growled at him. He did as he was told, pulling his top over his head and letting it fall somewhere amidst the unmade blankets that adorned the bed. A sharp poke told Arthur to lift his hips and in one impressive strong tug, Merlin had his jeans and boxers as far as his knees. Another had them down around his ankles, allowing Merlin space to move in.

At first, it seemed as though Merlin were intent on teasing him into insanity with his tongue. Frustration and impatience built with his breath. He snarled Merlin’s name as he fought to keep his hips still.

Merlin tutted at him. “Did anyone ever tell you that patience is a virtue?”

“Virtue is not a word I’d apply to this situation.”

This made Merlin laugh. He met Arthur’s eyes as he took him in his mouth.

Merlin’s mouth was everything. Arthur nearly lost himself in its heat immediately. He bit down hard on his lip in a desperate attempt to keep quiet but failed. His head fell back, his eyes fluttered closed and he groaned loudly. A hand tangled itself in Merlin’s hair. He forced his gaze downwards and was met with the sight of his own fingers tangled in Merlin’s dark locks, Merlin’s head moving rhythmically. He saw Merlin unfasten his own pants and take himself in hand. He swore and unintentionally pulled on Merlin’s hair, drawing a hum from the other man and another, less comprehensible, curse word from the blonde.

Everything he said after this point was unintelligible and before long, he was attempting Merlin’s name in warning, but as it wasn’t monosyllabic, he didn’t quite succeed. He came in Merlin’s mouth in hot waves. If the other man minded, he didn’t show it but he swallowed and Arthur felt immediately self-conscious. Merlin merely grinned at him, letting his head tip back but maintaining a rather intense level of eye contact as he finished himself off. When the last cry had faded from Merlin’s lips, Arthur let himself look away briefly.

Merlin pulled a box of tissues from beneath the bed and wiped his hands. He stood, kicked off his shoes and removed his jeans. “Stay?”

Arthur, who was reaching for his own pants, hesitated for the briefest second. “Sure” he said, pulling up his boxers and abandoning the rest of his clothes. He waited until Merlin had climbed in one side of the bed, to walk around to other and slip beneath the covers.

“You don’t strike me as the cuddling type” Merlin observed.

“I’m not.”

“Cool with me.”

They went to sleep with their backs to each other.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Take a shot every time Mordred does something intensely.

_"I would meet you with open arms_  
_But that doesn't mean you should walk right into them_ _  
_ And I would greet you with sweaty palms  
_You choose your poison ‘cause I've chosen mine”_

**What’s the Point?- The Kite String Tangle**

 

Arthur woke to Merlin’s forehead pressed between his shoulder blades.

“You’re awake” said the disappointed voice behind him. “That means I have to move.”

There was a pause. “You don’t have to.”

“I thought you weren’t into cuddling?”

“Apparently, I don’t know anything about myself anymore” Arthur muttered.   

Merlin’s breath tickled his spine as he chuckled. “Well, in that case.” He felt movement behind him and suddenly, an arm snaked over his waist. Merlin’s legs tangled themselves in his, his hips pressing against his ass. He felt the warmth of Merlin’s chest against his back. “Is this okay?” Merlin asked.

 _Yes._ “It’s not unpleasant.”

“I’ll take it” Merlin laughed.

He tightened his hold on Arthur’s body and nuzzled his face into his back. Arthur blushed. There was something unmistakably intimate about the action. They stayed like this for a while, Arthur trying to release the tension from his frame and not quite succeeding. He wondered if Merlin had fallen asleep, when he felt a soft kiss placed to his spine. His breath caught in his throat somewhere. The soft kisses continued across the planes of his back and up his shoulder until they reached his neck, at which point, they were interrupted with small bites and sucking until he was moaning and desperately hard. The hand that was draped over his stomach drifted up his chest, trailing a slow but pressing path up as high as his collarbone, back down until it found a nipple.

“Fuck, Merlin” Arthur breathed.

Merlin pulled him onto his back. “This is one way to start my morning” he grinned down at him. He placed a fleeting kiss to Arthur’s lips before withdrawing. Arthur chased the kiss, stretching his tired body to reach Merlin’s mouth again. He didn’t care that the kiss tasted stale.

Merlin’s hands continued to roam over his body, his mouth following. He looked extremely pleased to have Arthur flushed and writhing underneath him. “You make the most amazing sounds” he told him, between kisses pressed to his chest.

Arthur wasn’t sure if Merlin was teasing him or if he meant it. Despite himself, a soft keening sound escaped his throat as he felt Merlin tug at his boxers. He lifted his hips and let Merlin pull his only item of clothing down his body. The sudden absence of sensation, as Merlin stripped himself of his own underwear, felt like a sensory overload, like all of his nerves had suddenly short-circuited and he’d lost the ability to feel anything. He let his eyes drift closed for a moment.

“Get up. On your knees.”

Willingly, Arthur obliged. Merlin rested both hands on his shoulder for a second before one began to drift down, brushing lightly over his collarbone and dragging down his chest.  Merlin’s hands on him once more felt like he’d been set on fire and for the briefest of moments, he had enough clarity of thought to consider moving away before he was burned.

Instead, he leaned into the touch, even as Merlin’s hand drifted down over his stomach, lingered a second and kept going. Suddenly, Merlin had taken them both in hand and Arthur was gasping loudly, his chest heaving sharply with the action. Merlin’s chuckle dissolved into a low moan of his own, one that drew a whimper from Arthur as it sent more heat rushing through him, setting his skin alight before diverting to his groin and settling beneath Merlin’s fingers, in the trails of their wake. Merlin’s pace increased until both of them were breathing in sharp hot pants and Arthur leaned in to kiss Merlin’s neck, though the kisses quickly dissipated into general ineffectual mouthing.

Merlin was the first to come, pulsing heavily into his hand and over Arthur, a groan rumbling from deep in his chest. He dropped his head into the crook of Arthur’s shoulder but carried on his frantic but expert pace until only moments later, Arthur tumbled over the edge after him. Utterly spent, Arthur collapsed back onto the mattress.

Merlin landed on top of him with a grin. “I’m bloody starving. Do you like pancakes?”

Arthur could only nod, too tired to find an excuse not to eat.

Merlin rubbed a slightly sticky hand across his stomach. “Come on, let’s get cleaned up and get something to eat.”

Arthur followed Merlin into the shower, where they kissed beneath the water stream and Merlin carded his fingers through wet blonde hair and laughed softly every time Arthur’s eyes drifted closed at the touch. He dressed in borrowed clothes and was led by the hand down to the kitchen.

“Do you know how to make pancakes?”

“No?”

“What?!”

“We don’t really cook at home…”

“Of course.” Merlin was smirking at him and Arthur swallowed uneasily. The mention of pancakes had him salivating, but his stomach turned at the notion of food. “It’s a good thing I’m a wonderful teacher.”

Merlin was a good teacher, patient and clear with his instructions, talking him through the steps and never teasing him for not knowing the basics but he did conceal a smile when Arthur smashed his first egg. He watched Merlin spoon the first load of batter into the pan and the sizzle and the smell of the solidifying pancake turned his stomach so violently that he had to turn away quickly to hide the way his body instinctively retched. He hid the reaction by fetching himself a glass of water rather abruptly, filling his mouth with the liquid and holding it there until the urge to gag had passed. As the pancakes cooked, his stomach churned and begged him to eat. He ignored it, focusing his attention on Merlin instead.

Merlin was, as always, beautiful in a way that was thoroughly disarming. There was nothing actively attractive or sexy about watching someone make breakfast. It might have been the way that his shower-damp hair fell into his eyes, obscuring the glint of intelligence and the amusement always found there in the blue, and the sunlight struck the angles of his lowered head in a way that was almost violent in its resolve to make the man look as ethereal as possible.

Suddenly the light was shifting, shadows falling where they hadn’t been only a beat before, and he was no longer looking at the sharp curves and clean lines that constituted Merlin’s profile, but at those eyes that had previously downcast and eclipsed by dark hair. Eyebrows raised, mouth quirked in amusement. He has entirely missed whatever it was Merlin had said.

“Um, what?”

“I said the food’s ready, do you want syrup?” Merlin laughed, reaching over Arthur’s head to pull plates down from a rack.

“No, thanks.”

It seemed that Merlin ate the way he did everything else, with a vigour and passion like nothing Arthur had ever seen, and he once had the misfortune of standing between drunk Gwaine and a pizza. Arthur pulled a pancake onto his plate and stared at it for a number of moments before taking up his knife and fork. He could feel Merlin’s eyes on him. He put a piece of pancake into his mouth. Chewed. Tried not to grimace.

He ate two pancakes to Merlin’s nine. The urge to vomit had presented itself nearly immediately but he fought it just long enough that some time had passed after eating before excusing himself. His body wanted him to run, urged him to move faster, as he was gagging before he had reached the doorway, but he fought and he struggled and he composed, kept an even pace and his body still. He clawed for control and won.

It was a short lived victory as once he had turned the lock on the bathroom door behind him, instinct shed the flimsy restraint he’d managed to put on it. He threw himself down onto his knees and his stomach emptied itself without prompting. It took a minute to get to his feet and shamble as far as the sink. He gripped the edges until it hurt and raised his head to look at himself. Involuntary tears leaked down his face, his lips were wet from where he had spat the final remnants from his mouth, his eyes were sunken and small in his head. The Band-Aids on the back of his hand were dark and tattered from the previous day. A quick glance around the bathroom revealed no cabinets or drawers, he would have to ask for a fresh one. He snatched up the bottle of mouthwash as an afterthought, gargled and rinsed, and put it back on the back of the toilet.

“Hey, Merlin? Do you have any plasters or anything?”

Merlin was now by the sink, elbow-deep in soapy water, a pan in one hand and a sponge in the other. He turned to look at Arthur as he spoke. “Yeah, they’re here under the sink.” He stepped aside a little and Arthur moved forward. He had to crouch to open the press in question, saw a flimsy packet of generic drugstore plasters beside the bleach and reached for them.

“I like you on your knees” Merlin remarked casually.

Arthur dropped the box. He fumbled to pick it back up and rose quickly, his pale face burning with a blush.

“I’m only teasing you, Arthur.”

The smile Merlin gave him had a softness that he hadn’t seen in the man before and he was about to blush again when water and soap were flicked at his face. He turned his head away and laughed.

“I meant to ask,” Merlin continued. A stab of panic. “What happened to your hand?”

“Fell” he grunted.

“On to the back of just one of your hands? Wanna try again?”

“Fine, I-” This was not the time for the truth. “-lost my temper, hit a wall.”

“A hothead, huh? Why am I not surprised?” Merlin chuckled, wiping his hands dry on a tea towel. “Here, let me.”

“What?”

“Sit down, let me dress it. It probably needs cleaning anyway.”

A little sheepishly, Arthur handed over the box and sat down at the kitchen table. Merlin bent back down to the press under the sink again, took out a bottle of medical disinfectant, grabbed a few sheets of kitchen roll and filled a bowl with water. He took the lot over to the table. Arthur watched him do it.

“Hand,” Merlin demanded, holding out one of his own, setting up his various things with the other. He placed a hand in Merlin’s outstretched one, unsurely, hesitantly, barely even touching the other man’s skin until Merlin took a firm grip on him and he had no choice. He didn’t speak as Merlin worked, but Merlin did, chatting away to him about what he was doing- Merlin did that a lot, talked his way through the steps of what he was doing- and Arthur tried to follow. The old plasters came off easily and the disinfectant stung, making Arthur draw a hissing breath through his teeth, but Merlin was surprisingly gentle and even pulled away when Arthur hissed. The wounds looked violent and like they should have hurt much more than they did. He looked away, not able to look at his knuckles for very long. He had caused that. That was his fault.

“Well,” Merlin began, throwing the old plasters and bloody kitchen paper he’d been using to clean the area into the bowl and standing up, “I’d hate to be that wall. I’d say you fairly levelled it.”

Arthur made a disinterested noise and let it die.

“Afternoon, chaps!”

Arthur jumped as Will blustered into the room. The sound of the front door closing travelled up the hall and then footsteps announced the arrival of Gwaine and then Mordred. Gwaine was carrying boxes piled high in his arms, eight and twelve packs of assorted beers and ciders, and Mordred had a bag full of bottles of spirits, though he barely looked legal enough to purchase alcohol at all. How old even was that kid? It was impossible to tell. His intensity aged him.

“We’re hosting” Merlin said. It wasn’t a question, merely an observation of the inevitable.

“Not for another few hours.” There was a pointedness to Will’s reply, like he was trying to tell him something that Arthur wasn’t picking up on.

“Plenty of time to get ready, so” Merlin returned in the same tone, clearly picking up whatever had been communicated. He turned to Arthur and gave him a once over. “You’ll need different clothes in that case. Come along, Pendragon.”

And then, like dog at his master’s heels, he followed.

It transpired that “getting ready” in Merlin’s dictionary really meant Arthur lying across the bed in bored exasperation flicking through one of Merlin’s dense old introduction to philosophy textbooks and sighing intermittently as Merlin carefully considered every last item in his tightly packed wardrobe as if it were a matter of life and death. It had been at least an hour now, Arthur figured, and he was starting to worry about what the people downstairs might think. He could hear the tv faintly in the background, but mostly, he and Merlin themselves had been silent, apart from Merlin occasionally ‘hmh’ing and him sighing.

“This would be much easier if I could peg your aesthetic” Merlin announced.

Arthur looked up from the explanation of the Socratic method. “I don’t _have_ an aesthetic.”

“You should.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow.

“It couldn’t hurt” Merlin muttered and turned back to the wardrobe.

“Oh for Christ sakes, Merlin, does it even matter anyway?” Arthur put the book aside and sat up.

“Is that an existential question?”

“Can I just have a shirt please?”

He caught the shirt that was thrown his way, a bright blue thing that matched his eyes. Pulling off the ill-fitted t-shirt he’d be wearing since they’d gotten out of the shower, he changed into it. It was light and loose and smelled like Merlin.

“You know, I have a red scarf that looks really nice with that” Merlin commented.

Arthur blanched. “I’m not really the scarf wearing type. And it’s summer.”

Merlin shrugged, in the process of trading one predominantly black outfit for a similarly predominantly black outfit. Arthur watched him change, though he knew he shouldn’t.

Merlin left the room to go style his hair in the bathroom and Arthur wasn’t sure if he should go back downstairs or not. He took the book he was reading and heard a phone chime in the room. It was his, he realised, sat there on the edge of the bed by the pillow, where he must have left it last night. It really was a marvel that he hadn’t lost the thing, considering how little he has used it in the past few weeks. There was a text on the front screen.

“ _Starting soon. You should eat.”_

He went both cold and hot all at once, blood draining from him, panic rising in waves. Merlin’s voice could be heard from downstairs, his sudden laugh rose up the stairs to where Arthur had been left standing, clutching the phone and the book. He tried to shake the memory of throwing up that morning before it could rise again. He was hungry. He had forgotten that he was hungry.

He put the phone back on the bed and wandered downstairs. The others were watching tv, the kitchen set up and ready for the impromptu house party to begin. He settled next to Will on one of the couches, deeming him the least dangerous of the bunch. Not that they were dangerous, any of them. He just didn’t want to face questions or looks or Merlin, who he suspected suspected him in return. He read for a while, until the first wave of house guests arrived.

Once the house was appropriately full, the book was promptly swapped out for a drink that was handed to him by Gwaine, a strong measure of Captain Morgan’s. “No whiskey, sorry.”

Arthur bobbed his head. “‘S fine.”

Gwaine looked like he was about to say something, something he perhaps didn’t want to say, when a sudden blast of music made them both jump.

“Sorry, sorry!” Will called from the kitchen, where the music had erupted from, and the volume fell until it was an acceptable level for human ears.

Whatever Gwaine had been about to say was no longer on his lips and he stood for a moment longer before wandering away. Glass in hand, Arthur wandered in the opposite direction, ending up in the kitchen, the only possible destination really.  Mordred was there, stood next to Will, who was chatting to a few of the guests. Mordred was not chatting. It seemed like he only ever spoke to Merlin and him. He had seen Mordred with Will and Gwaine a few times now, but had never seen him actually _speak_ to them. Surely, he must have, since he had arrived with them earlier, so they must have picked him up at some point, but Arthur wasn’t convinced. He found himself approaching the strange boy as he was the only non-stranger in the room.

“Alright” he said, and gave a smile that was actually genuine for once.

Mordred nodded. “You?”

He nodded back and then looked away, beginning to regret initiating this exchange. He cleared his throat and pushed on. “Do they hold parties here often?”

“Practically always” Mordred said matter-of-factly.

“Are they always as spontaneous as this?”

The boy gave him a look that said ‘Refer to my last response’ so Arthur just nodded thoughtfully. “Do you come to all of them?”

“Nearly all. I only started hanging out with Merlin in the last year or so, though.”

“You seem close.”

Mordred looked mildly surprised by this, his eyebrows shifted upwards but only slightly. “I suppose you could say that.”

“You don’t seem to agree.”

Those brows fell again and furrowed. “Between you and me,” his voice dropped almost conspiratorially but was laced with something awfully like sadness at the same time, “I don’t think Merlin is close to anyone.”

“What?” Arthur frowned. “But Merlin knows everyone, he has loads of friends.”

“Knowing someone doesn’t make them your friend. There’s a difference between being popular and being close to people.”

The statement was doubly directed at him. For a moment Arthur wanted to snap at him, to demand to know how this kid knew so freaking much about him since they certainly were not friends, not by either Mordred’s or his own definition. He held back, aware of the fact that he could still learn from the boy. About Merlin, that was. He couldn’t ask Merlin these things, not when there was a possibility that Merlin would ask them back to him.

The music increased in volume just then, not dramatically, but enough that the conversations around him had to raise in volume too, and the previous mellow enough generic pop songs switched to actual dance music. Merlin was upon him like a light, grabbing his hand, and pulling him close.

“Dance with me.” A wicked grin. A dark promise in his eyes.

“Oh, uh-” But he couldn’t think of a reason to say no. Apart from complete and total embarrassment, but he’d been there already and a quick glance around revealed that Merlin wasn’t the first to have this idea. He hadn’t noticed that more and more people had been arriving, and it seemed like loads of them were flooding into the kitchen, deeming it their dance floor. He gave in and let Merlin pull him into the middle of the huddle.

Dancing with Merlin was a wild, primal experience. He danced much like he kissed, with a sense of reckless abandon but also experienced control. He moved with his whole body and he was just so graceful and confident… Arthur felt a little lacking in comparison, self-conscious and disjointed, but Merlin pressed his body into his and guided both of their movement through song after song until they were both panting and sweating.

“Outside?” Merlin said right into his ear, making him shiver but he nodded and they made their way out the back door.

The night was cool, bordering on crisp, and Arthur felt damp all over. He shook his hands through his hair in an attempt to coax some volume back into it. He felt drained, weak from exertion, and he was hungry again. He leaned back against the wall and watched Merlin light a cigarette.

“Having fun?” Merlin asked.

He nodded, still slightly breathless.

“Me too” Merlin grinned and then laughed. “I like you, Pendragon.”

There was a moment where Arthur thought he might puke again. It wasn’t panic, it was excitement, a quick pang of it, like a kick to the stomach and suddenly he was a whole new kind of breathless.

There was still a few pulls left in the cigarette but Merlin stubbed it out against the wall and let it fall into the drain at the bottom of the exterior pipe. Before Arthur could wonder if he was about to go back inside and if he should follow him, Merlin had placed his hands on Arthur’s face and was kissing him. He kissed back, savouring the warm, smokey taste in the back of Merlin’s mouth.

He didn’t know how long they’d been kissing for, pressed against the wall like that, gripping each other as tightly and as frantically as they could, but Merlin pulled away and looked at him like he’d just said something exceptionally profound.

“You look knackered” Merlin said eventually.

“I guess I am.”

Merlin smiled. “I’m heading back inside. You coming?”

“Still catching my breath” Arthur laughed, “Maybe in a bit.”

“Right. See you in a bit then.” Merlin disappeared back inside and Arthur let his head fall back against the wall, gazing up at the night above him.

“I like you too, Merlin.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end is nigh. Like, 'in-two-chapters-time' kind of nigh.   
> If you have been affected by the issues raised in this chapter and would like someone to yell at, please contact our dedicated support line on expresstickettotheend@outlook.com   
> As usual, the chapter song has all the perfect relevance and I highly suggest you give it a listen alongside the chapter.  
> (Also, please note the time skip that occurs in the middle of the chapter.)

_ "But you don't know what hell you put me through _ __   
_ To have someone kiss the skin that crawls from you _ __   
_ To feel your weight in arms I'd never use _ __   
_ It's the God that heroin prays to" _ __   
**To Be Alone- Hozier**

 

The words escaped into the night air before he could stop them, though he lurched from the wall as if he could somehow scramble to reclaim them. But it was much too late for that. He had said it, finally acknowledged it. It could never be taken back, could never be unsaid. He waited. One beat, two, a moment, a minute. 

Nothing changed. 

He went back inside.

People were still dancing, he had to push his way through them to get a drink and then get out of the room again. The house was largely lacking in the “people he knew” category, especially now that he couldn’t locate Merlin, Gwaine, Will or, God forbid, Mordred. He would settle for Mordred again, if it meant he could ask questions. The kid could already read his very soul, there was no point in being discreet about it. 

And would it really be such a bad thing if people knew?

He deliberated this for a moment and decided that yes, yes it would, and then put that thought back in it’s mental box. 

The couch was full when he walked into the sitting room and he was about to turn and walk back out again, when a pleasant female voice chirped “Arthur, hi!” It was that girl from the first party, the one who’d given him the phone charger… Freya, perhaps? She was waving him over to the slip of space next to her. He smiled and walked over, deciding it was better than standing silently and sullenly until Merlin returned from wherever he went. Freya, it turned out, was actually rather lovely. She had dark enough hair and sharp enough features that she may have been related to Merlin and Mordred, another striking cousin to add to the set. 

“Oh, I’ve known Merlin since we were little” she explained, when Arthur asked how long she had known the host. “Will, too. Merlin and I dated when we were younger, before he came out. We all ended up in uni together, me, Merlin, Will and Gwaine. What about you? How do you know him?”

“Through Gwaine” was all he offered in response. 

He must have been chatting to Freya for at least an hour. She had plenty of stories to tell about the four of them and Arthur listened raptly, laughter escaping him more often than not. It felt nice, to laugh and mean it. There was a pause in conversation as Freya waved across the room at someone. Arthur followed her gaze and saw Mordred frowning at them both from the doorway but he quickly walked away.

Freya sighed. “Such a strange boy.”

“I’ve noticed” Arthur said, still looking at the spot where the boy had previously been.

“Sad, really” she continued.

“In what way?”

“Well” she began, but then stopped, chewing her lip like she was debating whether to go on or not. She did. “Mordred never knew his mother. It was just him and his father for a long time and Merlin didn’t even know he existed until a few years ago. I think Mordred really looks up to him, sort of like an older brother or something, but you know how Merlin is.”

Arthur nodded like he did but he didn’t. 

His glass was empty so he excused himself to go fill it again. As he went about pouring a drink, he wondered what Freya had meant by that statement.  _ ‘You know how Merlin is’.  _ If only he did.

“Freya’s nice.”

“Jesus Christ, Mordred!” Arthur exclaimed in surprise, barely avoiding spilling his drink everywhere from fright. “Wear a bell or something! What are you, a ghost?!”

Mordred looked like he was laughing but there was no sound coming out of him at all. It was the weirdest thing Arthur had seen, possibly ever. 

“Where is everyone?” Arthur asked, eager to move on,

“If by ‘everyone’ you mean the other three people you know, Will is… upstairs with some girl, and Gwaine said he was making a food run but then I saw Merlin talking to him so I don’t actually know.”

Arthur didn’t like the idea of Merlin and Gwaine missing together but didn’t let himself consider it. “Oh” he said, disappointment in his tone that he couldn’t quite conceal.

“I feel like you don’t like me very much.” Mordred sounded genuinely hurt as he said that. Arthur felt immensely guilty.

“Mordred, I barely even know you. At best, I’m indifferent.”

“There’s a lot more to you than you let people see, Arthur Pendragon.”

That was unsettling, to say the least. Arthur frowned at the boy, unsure of how to respond. “I have no idea what you mean” he decided on and walked back into the sitting room.  

Merlin was perched in the spot he had vacated next to Freya, half on the arm of the chair, half on the seat. He grinned when he saw Arthur approach. “Just the man I was looking for” he lept up and grabbed Arthur’s arm, pulling him in the direction of the stairs. He followed eagerly. It was becoming a familiar scene, a familiar sensation, being led by Merlin, the anticipation of something- anything- rising in his chest. 

That was the last he saw of the party. They had barely reached the top of the stairs when Merlin lurched at him, lips pressing everywhere. A part of him didn’t even care that they were still in view but another part of him was pushing Merlin in the direction of his bedroom, chasing the kisses when they were pulled away, hands scrambling for something to hold as they pushed and coaxed.

They spent the rest of the night tangled in each other, tangling themselves over and over, and for once, Arthur had no fear, only desire. 

He woke the next morning, stiff, sore and still exhausted in Merlin’s bed. Merlin had his face smushed into his pillow and one arm draped over Arthur. He slipped out from under the other man’s grip and into the bathroom down the hall. This was usually the point where his body screamed at him but oddly, he felt fine. He almost felt happy.

Merlin was awake when he returned, lying on his back, the blankets pooled around his waist and one arm outstretched to the area Arthur had just vacated. “Morning.” Merlin’s voice was heavy and lilting, like honey dripping from a spoon.

“Hey” Arthur returned and settled on the bed again. 

Merlin reached out and lazily began to play with Arthur’s fingers. “We should stay in bed today.” 

That grin again and Arthur remembered the sensation of Merlin’s hands and fingers and mouth and tongue, everywhere, all over him, driving him right to madness again and again until he could no longer take it and had collapsed against the mattress and nearly instantly fallen asleep. 

“Sure” he said.

“That requires you getting back in, you know.”

He got back in and Merlin pulled him down on top of him to kiss him, lazily, sleepily, like he was still waking up. 

A day became two and then three, and on the third, they threw another party. 

It was Merlin’s idea this time. 

“I told Gwaine to invite your ‘Knights’,” Merlin smirked at him once they’d lifted the kitchen table across the room to sit against the wall.

Arthur’s stomach dropped, nausea rose. “Why?”

“You knew like, what, four people at the last party? I thought you might want some friends around.”

While Arthur absolutely did not want this, he merely smiled and bobbed his head because the act had already been done. He felt that old familiar stab of the urge to run, to avoid, to hide away from the eyes of people who thought that they knew who he was. He wasn’t sure anyone knew him anymore. He stopped knowing himself a long time ago. 

He helped Merlin and Will set up and retreated back to Merlin’s room to help himself to Merlin’s books. He’d never been one for reading, let alone someone else’s discarded textbooks, and honestly most of it went over his head, but some of it stuck. The odd idea or fragment of understanding inspired the kind of controlled thinking that he could both lose himself in and easily pull back from. 

“Have you come across Epicureanism yet?”

Merlin’s voice startled him and Arthur dropped the book off the edge of the bed he’d been sprawled across, losing his page. “Um, no” he responded, his voice dulled from being quiet for so long. “What’s that?”

Merlin threw himself down on the bed next to Arthur, rolling onto his back to stare up as Arthur stared down. “It’s the idea that the goal of philosophy and life itself is peace and happiness found through seeking pleasure in all things.”

“Sounds a bit… hedonistic?”

Merlin laughed brightly at this. “I sometimes forget that you’re smarter than you seem. I suppose it could seem hedonistic in summary. Of course, like all the Greeks, he placed an importance on mental pleasure over physical.”

“And which do you prefer?”

“Oh, I’m an absolute hedonist.” With that, he reached up and pulled Arthur’s mouth down to his. The kisses were hungry, sloppy and tasted of thick scented smoke. Merlin let go of his face and grinned up at him. "Tell me," Merlin began. "Did you learn Latin in Eton?"

"I didn't go to Eton."

"But you did learn Latin."

"Yes."

"Let's test your expensive education, shall we? Tell me what you understand by this phrase, 'Esse est percipi'."

"Um, 'it is perceived to be'?"

"Close. It's 'To exist is to be perceived'. It's Berkeley."

"Okay. So, what? We only exist when we're being looked at?"

"Essentially."

"So, every time you blink, I stop existing?"

"That's the argument."

"Then you'll just have to keep looking at me."

Another grin. “Ready to go?”

He wasn’t but he nodded anyway.

It never ceased to amaze him how quickly Merlin’s house could fill with a new set of strangers every time. He searched for Freya but couldn’t find her. Mordred was oddly elusive also. He lingered in the doorway to the sitting room, chatting idly with Will despite not liking the guy very much but he was reluctant to face the kitchen and the familiar faces he might find there. He hadn’t seen any of his friends since the first time they’d come to Merlin’s place and he hadn’t particularly wanted to either. But, at the same time, he’d need a drink at some point and he couldn’t keep standing here like a lost soul, so he drew a steadying breath and wandered into the kitchen. 

“He-ey!” Percy cheered as Arthur entered, “It’s Pendragon!”

“Haven’t seen you in a while” Lance smiled at him and he attempted to return it. He noticed Gwaine stood by the group and wondered if he would tell them the truth but Gwaine merely looked at him and said nothing.

“Haven’t been home much” Arthur returned vaguely.

“That means he’s been seeing someone” Leon grinned.

Arthur must have blushed because they all suddenly began jeering him, apart from Gwaine. Gwaine sipped his drink and walked away “I- No. I’m not seeing anyone.”

“Bullshit” Leon shot back quickly. 

Arthur didn’t argue, merely poured himself a drink from the bottles of cider at Percy’s feet. Whatever conversation his arrival had interrupted resumed, though he paid it no attention, picking at the damp label on the bottle and thinking of Merlin and the way he had kissed him earlier. He very much wanted that to happen again.

“Nice jeans” Percy threw the comment at him but it was in no way a compliment.  Arthur looked down. They were Merlin’s, faded black denim and extremely tight-fitting. A year ago, he wouldn’t even have gotten a leg in, but now they molded around his legs and there was a gap at his stomach that meant he had to keep pulling them up whenever he moved around too much. The black boxers that they revealed were Merlin’s also.

“I like them” Lance interjected, not willing to laugh with Percy and Leon. Lance too wore extremely tight jeans.

“Bit gay though, aren’t they?”

Abandoning the bottle half full on the counter, Arthur stormed away. He didn’t see Mordred until the boy’s face smacked into his chest in the hall and the rage that had consumed him evaporated. He didn’t have a chance to apologise as Mordred took one look at him and said “Come on.” Surprised, he followed Mordred out the front door and onto the curb, where the boy took a seat and, after a moment of hesitation, so did he. They were both silent for a moment, until Mordred shattered the silence with a question.

“Why do you let people treat you like that?”

“Like what?” he responded, affronted.

“However they want” Mordred replied. 

“Why is it every time I have a conversation with you I come away deeply emotionally disturbed?”

“Perhaps you were already emotionally disturbed before you began these conversations?”

“I’m going back inside.”

“That’s not a good idea” Mordred wasn’t looking at him. 

“Why not?”

“Trust me.” 

“I don’t even know you!”

“Just sit back down, Arthur,” There was a desperate, pleading edge to Mordred’s tone and when he finally looked up, there was something in his large, intense eyes that Arthur hadn’t seen before and didn’t like seeing now.

“Something is happening” Arthur was on edge now.

“Don’t be absurd.”

“You’re not even trying to be convincing anymore.”

Conflict was spread across the boy’s face, his mouth moved but no sound came out, he floundered. Arthur had never seen the boy’s composure slip like this and it added to the feeling of estrangement.

“Mordred, what is it?”

Mordred sighed. “I tried to warn you.”

“Warn me? About what?”

“He’s going to hurt you!”

“You know what, I’m going home. I think I’m done with people for today.” 

He turned and got as far as the door before Mordred called his name again, voice breaking in the middle that made him look back. “I'm sorry” the boy told him. 

He kept going. 

He needed his phone and the shirt he came in and he could go home. He wasn’t sure where his phone was exactly, but he remembered throwing it on Merlin’s bed at some point over the last few days and figured that would be a good place to start looking. No one noticed him enter the house, making it likely that no one noticed him leave either. He didn’t linger this time, setting off up the stairs with purpose, a purpose that had dissolved entirely by the time he’d reached the top of the stairs. 

Gwaine had stepped out of Merlin’s room and closed the door behind himself. He was pulling at the hem of his t-shirt when he looked up and saw Arthur. Gwaine paled and muttered something inaudible at him before pushing past him and fleeing down the stairs.

Unease rose in waves. He glanced back down the stairs. The cave called to him. He had the option to remain oblivious, to return to the shadows and pretend he never knew about the sun at all. Except the rays were already blinding him and he was already moving forward on unsteady legs.

Merlin was stepping into jeans when Arthur entered. He turned and regarded him steadily, quietly. He didn’t say anything.

“You’ve been hooking up with him.”

“Yeah.”

“But I thought we were…”

“Oh? Just decided that, did you? Ever thought of asking me?”

Merlin was sneering at him, his voice coloured with laughter. Of course Merlin was laughing at him. He’d been laughing at him all along. 

“We were never together, Arthur. Let’s get that straight. Whatever  _ relationship _ you’ve constructed in your head is exactly that.”

Of course. He saw that now. 

“I thought you liked me.”

It hurt. It hurt so much.

“I thought you were entertaining. I never liked you.”

“I-” 

But Arthur wasn’t sure what he thought or what he was. His heart had fallen into his stomach and he hadn’t drawn a breath in quite a while so his lungs burned and his stomach burned and he felt like he could vomit up his entire empty hollow stomach all over Merlin’s bedroom floor. 

“I liked you” he said eventually.

“That was your mistake” Merlin shrugged.

Someone stormed into the room at that moment, but Arthur could only see Merlin’s face and the cold expression etched into it. He was being pushed towards the door. Merlin’s face was blurring. He was very close to crying.

“I hope you’re happy with yourself,” Mordred snarled at Merlin.

Arthur turned and ran. He took the stairs two at a time, as fast as his legs and gravity could take him. He hurtled out the front door again and into the settling night, pausing only for a moment in the middle of the street to decide which way to go. He just wanted to go home, to be alone, to wash Merlin from his skin, to tear the skin from his bones so he’d never have to feel the man again, to shed all evidence of this entire… whatever it had been. What had Merlin called it? His mistake? He felt like such a fucking idiot.

“Arthur, wait!”

Mordred ran to catch up with him. He handed him his phone. “It’s dead or I would have called a cab. Come on, let’s get you home… Arthur? Arthur!”

He had doubled over in pain. The feeling of burning in his lungs escalated until it felt like his chest cavity had collapsed in on itself. He was gasping and panting for air, tears streaming freely from his eyes as desperate, pained noises escaped his throat. He was fading from existence. He was dying. His heart was about to explode. Mordred was yelling something at him but he couldn’t hear it because the boy was miles away and he didn’t exist so it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, everything hurt-

He didn’t feel himself hit the ground.

  
  
  
  



	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate chapter! A lot of time is covered in this chapter and time skips can be subtle. This chapter is a series of long-overdue conversations. 
> 
> As always, if you want to contact me directly about the fic or just in general, you can do so at expresstickettotheend@outlook.com

_"The streets outside your window, overflooded_  
_People staring they know you've been broken_  
_Repeatedly reminded by the looks on their faces  
_ _Ignore them tonight and you'll be alright"_

**Crosses- Jose Gonzalez**

  


He woke up two days later in a hospital bed.

 

Confusion and panic crashed over him in tsunami-sized waves, but they felt different. Everything felt different. The pain in his stomach was not the same, the raw feeling in the back of his throat was not the same either. It took him a moment to piece it all together. The steady beeping of a heart monitor was arguably the first clue. The second was the stabbing feeling in his hand when he tried to push himself into a sitting position. What the fuck had happened to him?

“You’re awake!”

A sharp spike in the heart monitor gave away his fear. Gwen jumped back a bit.

“So sorry! I seem to have a habit of scaring the life out of you, huh?”

“What are you doing here? No, wait… What am I doing here? Where is here, exactly?”

“They are all very… valid questions. Maybe we should calm down and get some tea first.”

“Gwen.” His voice breaks somewhere around the middle of the word, sounding like he was about to cry. He felt it entirely likely.

“Oh, Arthur.” Great, they were both about to cry.

Gwen had turned away from him and looked as though she was struggling greatly with something.

“Talk to me” he begged her. “Please, Gwen. I don’t- I’m so-” He was getting hysterical. He cut himself off.

She returned to the seat by the side of his bed and placed a hand over his. “Do you know what happened?”

He shook his head.

“Mordred said you had a panic attack, a rather severe one. You fainted because of the strain of your heart.”

He had so many questions. He started with, “My heart?”

“It wasn’t functioning properly due to your… disorder.”

The word hurts them both. It stung to hear the word out loud, like a harsh lash to the skin ripping open a fresh wound. It felt like acid on his tongue.

“How long, Arthur?”

The question made him flinch. He had hoped it would never come. “A few months,” he shrugged.

“But why? Arthur, you’re not overweight. And you’re so handsome!”

He blushed furiously and so did she, once she realised what she had said. “It’s not about my weight. Or my appearance.”

“Then why- I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I guess- I just- I was-” He didn’t know what to say. Nothing he could say sounded good enough. Everything he could say sounded stupid, shallow, pathetic.

“It’s okay. You can tell me.”

“Are you happy, Gwen?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you… like, satisfied… with your life?”

Gwen furrowed her brow. “I suppose I am, yes”

“Do you… like yourself?”

“Oh, Arthur!” she cried again, and he wished she would stop saying that. “Are you saying you did this on purpose? You could have died.”

“I’m aware. I was hoping for it.”

“Why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you reach out? This is not a solution, Arthur. You don’t have to suffer like this.”

“I wanted to-” His sentence ended in tears. “I wanted to.”

“It must have been horrible.”

“At times” he began and paused. He couldn’t tell if he wanted to talk about this or not, but he saw the concern and pain on Gwen’s face and decided he would try. “It sort of hurt, at first. But then I got used to feeling hungry, and I got used to the feeling of an empty stomach. I even got used to the taste and eventually the bile stopped hurting me too.”

“They said the wounds on your hands were from making yourself sick.” The statement rose in the end like a question and almost reluctantly, her gaze flickered towards his injured hand. It was uncovered, the Band-Aids that Merlin had applied gone, revealing pinkish skin running into dark fresh scabs were his teeth had cut the acid-worn skin. He lifted the hand in question to swipe at his running nose.

“Yeah. Whenever I had to make myself eat, I would force myself to throw up afterwards.”

There was a brief flash of disgust on Gwen’s face but Arthur understood. He knew that it hurt her to hear this, though he couldn’t figure out for the life of him _why._ Why did she care about this at all?

“This is upsetting to you.”

“Of course it is, Arthur! I’m so sorry. I wish I had known, I wish I could have done something. I- … I made you eat, didn’t I?”

His body went cold. He nodded.

“No wonder you were so reluctant… I thought it was the fact that your father sent me.”

His father.

“Has he been told?”

Gwen winced. “He was called when you were admitted. He couldn’t come in straight away so he sent me instead, to find out what was going on.”

“What did you tell him?”

“They wouldn’t speak to me because I’m not family, although I told them I was your cousin so if anyone asks, play along. I had to call your father in and they told him everything.”

Arthur couldn’t look at her. He stared at his lap instead. “How did he react?”

“At first, he flat out denied it. But then they showed him-”

“Showed him?”

“Y-Your torso, and your hands. I think it really surprised him, how skinny you’d gotten. He hadn’t noticed.”

“He hadn’t looked.” He hadn’t intended to say it so harshly, but it came out as a snarl.

“I take it he is a part of this?”

“He is but… I don’t think I’m ready to talk about this yet.”

She smiled at him. “That’s okay. Take your time.”

“Has he… Has my father been back?”

“Not since yesterday.”

He glanced around the small room. “Is my phone around?”

Gwen all but leapt up to accommodate him and retrieved his phone from the little bedside locker. “I have a charger, here.” She took one from her own handbag, lying discarded beside the chair, and plugged it in for him. “Are you calling your father?”

“Christ, no! I’m checking the fallout.”

Gwen made a small noise of understanding. “Word travels fast, huh?”

Once the phone turned on again, a flood of texts arrived all at once. A few of his friends had sent generic “get well soon” texts. There was one from Lance, reminding him to be strong and recover.

Recover. He hadn’t even considered that word. He never thought he’d get to that point. He’d never thought he’d be discovered either, never imagined anyone confronting him, anyone knowing what he did to himself. He wasn’t sure how he felt after having talked to Gwen, if he felt better or just even more terrified than he had been. Part of him felt lighter, but that could have been the fact that the hollow weight in his stomach had lifted.

He went back to scrolling.

There were two missed calls from Gwaine, two days apart, and five from Morgana.

Finally, there was text from an unknown number. The same unknown number from before.

“ _You need to eat today._ ”

It was from the day of the party, approximately halfway through. It hadn’t been long since he’d been separated from Merlin.

Merlin.

The hurt returned like a hunger pain, and so did the self-pity. Once more, he felt like a right idiot. He thought- Well, he thought someone had actually liked him for once. More the fool him.

“Arthur, are you alright?”

“Fine, yeah,” he put the phone on the locker and pushed it to the other side, away from him.

“Oh, your friend is here!” Gwen chirped cheerfully.

He looked up to find dark, unruly hair and large blue eyes. For a moment, he saw Merlin and his heart rose to the back of his throat and he tried to both sit up and run away at once, achieving neither.

Mordred smiled at them both meekly.

“I need to talk to Mordred. Do you mind leaving us alone for a few minutes?”

“Oh. Of course. I better go find a doctor anyway and tell them you’re awake.” Gwen smiled at them both and ushered Mordred in as she left.

Mordred lingered for a second. Arthur stared. Under the weight of his gaze, Mordred shuffled into the room and took Gwen’s newly vacated seat.

“You knew.”

Mordred looked at him.

“You knew everything. This whole time.”

“I did.”

“You tried to tell me. All those times we were alone, you were trying to tell me.”

“People never believe me about Merlin” he laughed bitterly. “They create this version of him, this living fantasy, and he just feeds their idea of him for as long as it’s convenient, as long as it suits his desires. And then he just... throws them away. He ruins people. And he doesn't care."

"He never cared about me."

"No, I don’t think so... I'm sorry."

"... He never sent those texts either, did he?"

"...No."

“You did.”

Colour flooded Mordred’s face. It was all the confirmation Arthur needed.

Arthur nodded slowly as it all came together. He had suspected but now he knew. “I knew you knew about me from the moment we met. You knew what I was doing.”

“I saw your hands, the marks on your knuckles and the way that they shook. And then I saw you get sick when you went outside. I pieced it together after that.”

“But why the texts?”

“I thought that confronting you in person wouldn’t end well.”

Arthur gave a short, humourless chuckle. “You’re probably right. Where did you get my number in the first place?”

“Gwaine.”

“Right.”

There was a moment where neither spoke, both sat there not looking at each other.  A few more seconds passed before Mordred stood. “I should probably head off. I just wanted to check on you.”

“You were here yesterday too.”

“And the day before” Mordred gave a smile.

“I’ve been here two days?! Jesus Christ.”

“You really scared me. When you went down.”

“I’m sorry. But I’m glad you were. I’m glad it was you.”

“I am too.”

Mordred had reached the door. “Wait!” Arthur cried and tried to push himself up a little more. “Can I ask you something a little odd?”

“Of course” Mordred smiled but tipped his head in curiousity.

“How old are you?”

“I’m fifteen.”

Arthur nodded as if this didn’t bother him in the slightest. Mordred gave a small wave.

“One more thing!”

Mordred turned back, amused.

Arthur smiled back, “I’m saving your number this time.”

Mordred was laughing as he left.

Merlin was on his mind for the rest of the day, as doctors came and went and he answered questions automatically and didn’t take in a word that was said to him. Instead, he thought of Merlin. He thought of everything that had happened between them, remembered the stolen kisses and the quick exchanges.  But every time he felt a smile form, darkness crept in. He remembered Merlin being sharp as a thorn, talking down to him, laughing at him. It wasn’t so much that Merlin had played him, but played with him. He had been an amusement, and too naive to even see it.

Late the next day, Arthur was moved to a “facility”. He didn’t ask questions, he didn’t want to know. He didn’t see his father, but Gwen came.

She greeted him with a smile. “Your father sent me to see if you wanted anything from home.” She glanced around the room, similar to the hospital room but the walls were a washed out pinkish shade and there was a beaten brown couch in the corner of the room, as well as the standard chair by his bed, which looked more like a proper bed than a hospital one. “It’s… nice here.”

Arthur grunted in response.

“I have some clothes and such here” Gwen motioned to the backpack in her hand. “I hope you don’t mind but I collected them from your room.”

“‘S fine.”

“You can make a list of anything you might want and I’ll bring it in to you tomorrow. I also have to ask you about visitors. So far, it’s just me and your father cleared. Is there anyone else you want to let in?”

He thought about it. “Morgana, maybe. And Mordred. If he wants.”

“Have you spoken to a doctor yet?”

He shook his head.

“Have they told you what’s going on?”

“Haven’t asked.”

“Do you want to know?”

“Not especially. I take it this is some kind of treatment centre, picked by my father most likely, and I’m expected to recover here.”

“That’s essentially the gist of it, yes. I’ve done some research though, and this place seems really good. You’ll be in really good hands here and the treatment options are really good. There’s all sorts of therapies and programmes-”

“Gwen.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“I’ll text you that list later. Have you heard from Morgana?”

“I’ve been keeping her updated. You should call her.”

“Okay. I need you to take my phone off me tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

Later that night, he called Morgana and cried for the entire conversation.

He was a month into his treatment before he saw his father, at his therapist’s insistence. The session was short and awkward and when Dr. Gaius left them alone together, Arthur felt his father stare at him until he finally made eye contact.

“I’m sorry.”

“They tell me you’re recovering well.” His father looked around the room. He had this skill of somehow looking down his nose at things that were positioned above him.

Arthur could only nod.

“You’re looking much better.”

“Thanks” Arthur replied after a moment.

“See to it that it doesn’t happen again.”

With that, his father was gone from the room and he was left sitting there, blinking away tears before they could form. He returned to his room without a word and waited to be called for his next meal.

He turned nineteen towards the end of his treatment and spent his birthday in the little pink room. Gwen brought four little cupcakes in a tray, which he shared out among Gwen, Morgana and Mordred. The strawberry icing was sweet on his palette, making his mouth water and his teeth hurt after two months of a bland but steady diet. It took him longer than anyone else to eat his cupcake. He had to push to finish it off, because he knew they were all looking at him, watching him, waiting to see if he was better, if he was capable. It took two attempts but the cupcake was gone by the end of the visit. Gwen and Morgana gave him a hug and a kiss each as they said goodbye, but Mordred lingered.

“Is something the matter?”

Mordred hesitated again before asking, “Has Merlin tried to contact you lately?”

“I gave Gwen my phone when I got in here. But I doubt it. Why?”

“Doesn’t matter. Happy birthday, Arthur.”

Two weeks after his birthday, he was declared healthy enough to go home. Gwen came to collect him and his things, and he was thankful for her excited babbling the whole drive home.

“I want to move out” Arthur interrupted.

“Oh!” Gwen blinked at him in surprise.

“Not of the house, exactly. But maybe just my room. It feels too weird to go back there. It feels like going back in time or something.”

“Maybe we could move some furniture or move into a spare room. It might be downsizing a bit and you might have to give up your bathroom.”

“Do you think my father would allow it?”

“Do it anyway” Gwen shrugged. “You’ve been through a lot this summer, you deserve something nice. And anyway, it’s just a bedroom. He won’t even notice it.”

“Guinevere… whatever your surname is! You did not strike me as the ‘defying your boss’ type! I am shocked!” He laughed.

Gwen looked a little flustered as she grinned back at him. “If we get it done before he gets home, he can’t say no.”

That night, with Gwen’s help, Arthur moved into the smaller room at the back of the house. He didn’t have a bathroom of his own and had to use the one down the hall by his father’s room, but it eliminated the urge to reject his dinner. His first dinner with his father was much like every other, silent and drawn out. His serving was noticeably smaller than the servings he’d received before all this and although it took him a while, he cleared the plate. Though it had taken a few weeks to build up to full meals, food felt strange in his stomach, an unsettling weight that had made him grossly uncomfortable at first, a discomfort that had slowly waned but not faded entirely. He had taken to either sleeping after meals or occupying himself, usually reading, so that he wouldn’t have time to make himself throw up. His hands had healed. They no longer shook.

He had been home a week when the housekeeper knocked on his door.

“There’s someone here to see you.”

For a moment, his heart cried “ _Merlin”_ but he swallowed the word and nodded. “Send them up.” Part of him hoped it was Mordred as he hadn’t seen the boy since a few days before he’d been discharged and he had grown to enjoy the boy’s supportive company.

The last person he expected to see in his doorway was Gwaine.

“Alright, Arthur” Gwaine gave a nod and took a bashful step into the room.

“Gwaine.” He stood suddenly but wasn’t sure why he had done so and promptly sat back down on the bed again. “I- Hi.”

“You look great, mate. You look much better.”

“Thanks.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. “Look, I came to say I’m sorry.”

“About what?”

“The whole situation really.” Gwaine shifted his weight from foot to foot, seemingly trying to formulate what he would say next. “I didn’t know, Arthur, about any of this. I didn’t know about you or your… you know. And I didn’t know that you had feelings for Merlin. I thought…  I thought it was like me and him, you know? Just casual, whatever. I thought you knew about me, that we were still hooking up and stuff but I guess you didn’t.”

“It’s not your fault” Arthur sighed. “I should have known.”

“I would have warned you if I’d known all this would happen.”

“It’s fine” Arthur said because he wasn’t sure what else he could say.

“I suppose none of it matters now” Gwaine scoffed bitterly.

“Why’s that?”

Gwaine’s brow furrowed. “Hasn’t anyone told you? You know, about Merlin?”

“What about Merlin?”

“He’s been missing for over a month now.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is it. The end of the road. As always, you can contact me on expresstickettotheend@outlook.com  
> An extended Author's Note exploring the ending can be found [ here:](http://theanatomyofadreamer.tumblr.com/post/160817512354/extended-authors-note-express-ticket-to-the-end)

_"If you're looking for truth,_  
_Don't come looking for me,_  
_You're better off not knowing,_  
'Cos your own story is the safest place you'll ever be"  
**Safest Place- Echosmith**

 

“Merlin’s missing?”

“No one has seen him in weeks. Will said he just never came home after a night out but some of his stuff is gone. No one can get in contact with him and no one has spoken to him either. He’s just… gone.”

“He- He can’t- He can’t be _just gone_ . People don’t _just go_. Someone has to have seen him at some point or something.”

Gwaine shrugged. “Apparently not, man. It’s not uncommon for Merlin to go walkabouts for a while. Sometimes he goes out and doesn’t come back for a few days, either he meets someone or just doesn’t wanna stop the party. You know how it is. But this- Something about this feels different, mate.”

“Different? Different how?” Arthur motioned for Gwaine to take a seat.

Gwaine crossed the room to perch on the edge of the bed across from Arthur. “It took Will nearly a week to notice that any of his stuff was gone, but it was just essentials. Which isn’t like Merlin. He wouldn’t just leave all his things behind, but all that he took was just a couple of items of clothing and such. Sorta like he wasn’t planning to be gone long.”

“Have you called Mordred?”

Gwaine frowned. “Mordred hasn’t been around since that party. I think he was pretty pissed with Merlin.”

“Yeah, I reckon so” he muttered in response.

“Mordred’s been pretty elusive too, it might be an Emrys thing.”

“I’ll call him later and find out what he knows” Arthur offered, though the offer was more for himself than Gwaine.

“See if he can get in contact with Merlin’s mother. He might have just gone home for all we know.”

“I’ll let you know.” He attempted a smile and just about succeeded.

Gwaine rose to leave but turned back when he reached the door, “Hey Art? Whatever happens with Merlin.... Don’t let it affect you. You just focus on you, yeah?”

“Right, sure.”

He waited until after dinner to call Mordred, once his stomach had settled enough to let him think about Merlin again. Though Merlin had been out of his life for nearly two months now, he felt his absence now more than ever. There was a strange, empty space inside of him, one that bore Merlin’s name and screamed it like a prayer. He didn’t know why he still wanted to see the man- after all, what would he even say to him? He couldn’t even ask him why because he knew the answer. Maybe he would thank him. For the experience, if nothing else.

Mordred answered nearly immediately. “Arthur.”

“Merlin”, he offered in lieu of a greeting.

Mordred sighed over the line. “Someone told you.”

“Gwaine, yeah.”

“I figured it would reach you eventually. Hoped it wouldn’t, though.”

“Look, I get why you didn’t tell me” Arthur begun. “And I appreciate you looking out for my… feelings, but doesn’t this seem kinda serious?”

Mordred scoffed. “I don’t know. It seems pretty typical of Merlin, if you ask me.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. Merlin’s a fucking coward, he can’t handle being held accountable for the shit he pulls.”

Arthur paused, surprised by the venom in the younger boy’s voice. “Mordred, did something happen?”

“Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“You don’t need to protect my feelings, Mordred. I’m fine. I can do this.”

Mordred was quiet for a while. “Maybe this is better done in person.” Arthur made a noise of general agreement before the boy continued. “Can you meet me at Merlin’s place tomorrow?”

Arthur felt himself go cold and tried to ignore the shiver that ripped through his  body. “Yeah” he said and hoped he wasn't lying.

“I’ll text you a time tomorrow.”

And with that, Arthur was alone again, filled with doubt and questions.

That night, he dreamt that he was in Merlin’s room, an incohesive philosophy book in his lap that he was struggling to understand. There was a pressure on him to understand. He had to _get_ it. It would tell him everything he needed to know, if only the words would stop moving about and would form sentences. The book would tell him where Merlin was. Someone was sat next to him. It was the bust of Socrates that he’d seen on the Wikipedia page, blank-eyed, open mouthed and made of stone. He was shouting at Arthur in Greek.

“You can pretend to understand all you want” someone was saying to him, “but you don’t know a thing.”

“Merlin, I-”

“You don’t get it, Arthur. You never did. And that’s why you can’t find me.”

He had so many questions, but they fell off his tongue before they could form when Merlin snatched the book from his hands and began speaking Greek to the bust. As much as Arthur tried to interject, the two figures just spoke louder and louder until they had drowned him out completely in a conversation he couldn’t participate in.

He woke to the sound of Merlin’s laughter, a sound that bounced around his skull as he went about his morning. He stared at his phone all through breakfast, waiting to hear from Mordred. There was a fearful eagerness in him. His mind was at war with itself, part of him curious and driven to find out what had happened, while the self-protecting part of him, a part that had been long dormant the past few months, was warning him to stay away. To draw a line under the whole thing and never go back. For a moment, he thought maybe this part of his mind was right.

But then his phone went off.

He abandoned his cereal, half-eaten, his stomach turning itself off the moment he read Mordred’s text. The boy wanted to meet in the next half hour, which left Arthur very little time to find a way to get there. In the end, he rang Gwen and begged her to drop him across town. He didn’t mention Merlin, but he threw in Mordred’s name to garner favour. He had given Gwen a very cleaned up summary of his brief history with Merlin and it had been the first time he’d seen the woman enraged.

He knew he should have perhaps been angrier with Merlin, but it had never come to him. He wondered if it ever would.

He had Gwen drop him off a block away from Merlin’s place and walked the rest of the way. Mordred was sat on the front kerb, elbows perched on his knees, head in hands.

“Alright?” Arthur asked as he approached, both a greeting and a question.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“Mordred” he sighed.

The boy held up a key. “Are you sure?”

“We’re going in?”

Mordred nodded. “Will cleared out a week ago. He couldn’t front the rent without Merlin around so he moved home until Merlin comes back. If he comes back.”

Arthur, who had been staring at the closed front door, looked back at his friend. “You seem really set in the belief that he won’t.”

Instead of answering, Mordred scoffed and started up the path to unlock the door. Arthur stayed where he was, still debating if he should follow.

“We don’t have to do this, if you don’t want to.”

“I do. I just need a moment.”

Mordred waited, and Arthur drew his breath until he felt ready enough to approach the house. The air inside the house felt still and heavy as they stepped inside. The house was the cleanest Arthur had ever seen it. Every surface was clear and polished, everything in its place. It felt like a different space entirely and the silence was threatening to consume him. “Why do you think Merlin isn’t coming back? What happened, anyway? What did you want to tell me about?”

A beat passed. “I need to go up to Merlin’s room to find his mum’s number. Do you want to come with me or stay here?”

“I’ll come” he nodded and followed the boy up the stairs.

Merlin’s room was exactly the way it had been the last time Arthur had been in it. Mordred launched right into Merlin’s drawers, beginning his search. Hesitantly, Arthur approached the bed to take a seat.

There was a note perched atop the unmade bed. In thick bold letters, someone had written “ **fuck you merls** ”.

“This your work?”

Mordred gave the note a quick glance and shook his head. “Will.”

“Jesus. Is there anyone Merlin hasn’t pissed off?”

“You, apparently.”

“Mordred” Arthur sighed again.

“Arthur” he countered. “I’m serious. Two days after you were admitted, I came back here to talk to Merlin. Well, I suppose confront him is a more accurate verb. Someone had to call him out on his shit. You weren’t the first, Arthur, but you were definitely the worst. He knew about you and he still used you. He didn’t care about what he was doing to you.”

“He knew?”

Mordred gave a jerky nod and Arthur felt his body go cold.

“Yeah, well” Arthur spat back. “It seems like everyone knew what I was doing and not one of you said a word.”

Mordred looked like he’d been slapped. “You’re right” he began in a broken voice that threatened tears.

“No, Mordred, I’m-”

“Let me finish. You have nothing to apologise for. We didn’t help you. We didn’t do anything but hurt you further. We all failed you, Arthur. Every single one of us.”

For a moment, he didn’t know what to say. He crossed the room in two confident strides and gathered the smaller boy into his arms, pretending he didn’t feel the wet droplets staining his shirt. “So you think Merlin left because of me?”

Mordred shook his head against Arthur’s chest and sniffled. “I think he ran away from responsibility. Again.”

Arthur stared around the room again. From the unmade bed to the discarded clothing strewn across the floor to the uneven, precarious piles of books about the place. It looked like nothing was missing, as though Merlin had walked away with just the clothes on his back. “I’m not convinced.”

Mordred stepped out of the embrace, furiously swiping at his eyes with his knuckles. “Of course you’re not” he scoffed. “You’re still forgiving him, Arthur. Why? Why aren’t you mad at him yet?”

“I don’t need to be mad at him” Arthur shrugged. “He hurt me, I felt it, I got over it.”

“You’re not over it. If you were over it, you wouldn’t be here.”

“I’m here because I’m concerned! No one else seems to be. It doesn’t look like someone left, it looked like they never came back. That’s worrying. Someone is missing and no one gives a shit!”

“Well, maybe if Merlin wasn’t such an asshole, people would actually care about him.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?!”

The boy lowered his head and fixed his large eyes on the floor. “He doesn’t deserve your concern or your worry. He doesn’t deserve you at all.”

“Mordred” Arthur sighed once more as he realised what was happening. The boy’s face was  bright shade of pink and a heavy air of embarrassment hung about the room and encompassed them both. He didn’t know how to respond, how to acknowledge what he had just learned. No wonder Mordred had reacted so strongly to everything. “Hey” he said softly, placing a light hand on the boy’s arm until he looked up again, “Let’s just do what we need to and get out of here, yeah?”

Mordred went back to searching and once more, Arthur looked about the room. The philosophy books that he had been reading during his brief stay in the room were still piled on the bedside table. He took them up, remembering the dream he’d had.

“I found the number. I’m gonna get my dad to call Hunith and see if Merlin is with her. You ready to go?”

Arthur looked at the books in his hands.

“Take them” Mordred told him. “I don’t think Merlin would care.”

Shifting the books under one arm, Arthur followed Mordred outside. The door was locked behind them, and Arthur felt a strange sadness settle within him at the thought that he would likely never be back here.

“I’ll let you know what happens” was all Mordred said before he took off down the street.

Arthur called Gwen to ask her to pick him up. He sat on the kerb and put the books on his knees, flipping open the one on top. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just flicked through the pages to pass some time, looking more at the images than any text. As he turned the page onto a chapter about Descartes, a slip of paper slid from between the pages. It was a flurry of absent sketches done in black ink, with “ _8pm”_ scrawled in the corner. He wondered what that meant, where Merlin had been going, who he had been meeting at that time. For all he knew, that was the time Merlin had left his house for the last time, the last time anyone would have seen him.

He held the books tightly the whole way home. When Gwen had asked him where they’d come from, he found himself spilling the events of the last two days to her. Her grip on the steering wheel had tightened at his mention of Merlin and the soft frown on her lips and brow deepened when Arthur had voiced his concern for the other man.

“Be careful, Arthur” she told him and that was all.

He poured over the books all night, desperately searching for some sort of understanding, though of what he didn’t know. The first rays of sunlight were sneaking in his windows before he put the books aside to sleep, but he picked them up again the moment he woke up. He was roughly two hours and three chapters in when he realised he hadn’t had breakfast yet, and he had missed dinner the night before. The first crashing waves of hunger since he had entered recovery had his stomach seizing in a familiar pain. Book in hand, he fetched himself a banana and a mug of highly sweetened tea.

Mordred called him the next day, just after dinner.

“His mum hasn’t seen him, Arthur. He’s gone.”

He was speechless. For some reason, this information hurt. It was a pain he couldn’t name, couldn’t shake off. “What now?” he asked eventually.

“Nothing. Arthur, I’m sorry but this is where I stop. If Merlin was coming back, he would have by now.”

“You’re just giving up?”

“I gave up a long time ago. I suggest you do the same.”

Mordred hung up and for a few minutes, Arthur hated him. He supposed he understood. Mordred had been hurt by Merlin too. But did that justify giving up? Shouldn’t someone at least try? ...But did that person really have to be him? He didn’t even know what he could do. He knew the least of everyone involved and he hadn’t even been around when Merlin went missing. He went back to the books but found that his reading had become half-hearted and lacked the previous focus or intensity he’d felt before. There was something about the endeavor now that felt pointless. Arthur felt helpless. He felt hungry. He gathered the borrowed books together into a neat stack and put them on the floor by his bed, turned his back on them and went to sleep.

It took a few days for Arthur to realise how difficult it was to establish a routine from nothing. He didn’t read the books the next day, deciding to do something for himself for a while. He was overwhelmed by his lack of options. Every availability was a solitary one. He watched a few episodes of _America’s Next Top Model,_ played a few rounds of FIFA, took a shower. After a few hours, he was bored. Moreover, he was lonely.

Some days, he hung out with Mordred, drinking coffee and chatting about books. He played games with Gwaine and had a few drinks. He hung around Gwen’s office and pestered her while she worked until she took him out for dinner a few evenings, which he usually paid for in return for her driving him around.

It wasn’t until he tripped over the stack of books by his bed nearly two weeks later that he became conscious of the fact that he had forgotten about Merlin entirely. Guilt hit him square in the chest but it withered almost as quickly as it had bloomed. This had been the best Arthur had felt in a very long time. He was eating regularly, he was slowly gaining weight again to the point where his body was no longer a mess of sharp angles and sharper pains. For once, he felt like he actually had friends. He no longer felt alone and hopeless.

After breakfast the next morning, he returned to his room and scooped up the books. The taxi he had called while he was eating was waiting outside. About twenty minutes later, he arrived on Merlin’s street. The books were heavy in his arms as he approached Merlin’s door. He lingered, staring down at them at them for a moment, fleeting doubts crossing his mind.

His last link to Merlin.

Gently, he placed the pile on the welcome mat.

Walking away felt a lot like letting go.

  
_There's no end_  
_There is no goodbye_  
_Disappear_  
_With the night_  
**Wait- M83**


End file.
